LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 

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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 




A COMPENDIUM 



OF 



THE SABBATH 



RELIGIOUS KND CIVIL LIBERTY. 



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BY REV. R. G. ARMSTRONG, B.D., 

A Member of the Northzvest Texas Conference. 

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Printed for the Author. 

Publishing House Methodist Episcopae Church, South. 

Barbee & Smith, Agents, Nashville, Tenn. 

1892, 






PREFACE. 



When the third chapter of this " Compendium " was written, 
the thought had not occurred to the author to publish it. It 
was prepared for, and delivered as a lecture at the Georgetown 
Chautauqua, July 3, 1890. It was received with great favor by 
the audience, not a few of whom requested its publication in 
tract form. The matter of publishing it was taken under con- 
sideration, and after much delay and hesitation we have de- 
termined upon giving it to the public. The first chapter was 
also delivered as a lecture at the Georgetown Chautauqua, July 
9, 1891. In preparing these two chapters for publication, we 
have made some changes and added a little matter, which we 
trust will make them the more appreciated. We have written 
the second chapter expressly for this book. The subjects dis- 
cussed in this "Compendium " are living issues that directly in- 
volve our civil liberty, and the material, as well as the spiritual 
prosperity of this commonwealth. It is devoutly hoped that 
the attention of all professing Christians who may chance to 
read this book will be so fixed upon the great questions here 
so briefly discussed, that a. quickened zeal may follow. Chris- 
tians cannot be too careful in respect to the sanctity of the 
Lord's day. The language applied to political coxcombs and 
demagogues, while it is somewhat nervous, is deemed condign. 
W r e send this little volume out upon its mission with earnest 
prayer to God thati t may resul t in much good. 

* SSSSImiiSSmimmmmmm^^^ Author. 



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CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 
A Plea for the Sabbath. Page 

Institution of the Sabbath— One-seventh Part of the Time 
Sacred to God— Discoveries Among the Debris of Cities 
of the Long Ago— The Fourth Commandment— Man's 
Happiness Depends upon the Sabbath— The Sabbath and 
the Saviour— Demanded by Nature— Chateaubriand— A 
Chief Justice— Tyndail— Cox— Robertson— Farre— Xie- 
me ver— Not to Be a Day of Dissipation— Everything Needs 
Rest— Civil Government Must Conform to the Demands 
of Nature — Desecration of the Sabbath Increases Crime 
— Curtis — Crafts — Blackstone — Sabbath Laws Necessary 
— Cook — Hopkins — Washington — Tucker — Spencer and 
Mill vs. the Sabbath — Continental Sabbath for the Chris- 
tian — Sabbath Laws Have Always Existed — Constantine 
— Theodosius — Stonewall Jackson and Others — -The 
" Columbian Exposition " — Dangers That Threaten the 
Sabbath: Avarice, Sabbath Mails, Railroads, and Sabbath 
Papers — Ministers Must Keep the Sabbath — Losing the 
Sabbath — Whisky Traffic and Politicians vs. the Sabbath 
— Texas Senate and Lieutenant Governor Pendleton 
— Maetze Bill — Jefferson and Blackstone — The Old Scotch 
Woman ancLthe Sabbath — The Ministry Must Be Firm — 
The Appeal — The Sabbath Must Be Preserved 5 

CHAPTER II. 

The Sabbath Changed from the Seventh to the First Day 
by Divine Authority. 

Sabbath Defined — Design of the Lord — The Jews and the 
Sabbath — Seventh-day Baptists and Adventists — Institu- 
tion of the Sabbath — One Day to Be Observed as a Day of 
Rest — The Jews Lost the Sabbath — Commemorative 
Events — Religion Is Practical — Chronology vs. Sabbata- 

(3) 



4 Contents. 



Page 
rians— Nature vs. Sabbatarians— Change from Seventh to 
the First Day— Change Proved by the Resurrection of 
Christ— Change Made by Divine Authority, Not by 
Constantine— Testimony of the Fathers— Admissions 
—The Name of the Day— The Fact Established— Cog- 
nate Character of the Institution— Positive Proof of the 
Change — Pentecost— The Apostles — St. John — The 
Psalmist— The Day Honored of God— Objections to the 
Sabbatarian Theory— Crafts' Seven Points— Recapitula- 
tion 52 

CHAPTER III. 

The Inception, Progress, and Perfection of Religious 
and Civil Liberty. 

The Creation of Man— Man's Fall— The Inception of Lib- 
erty—Tribal Government — Aryans— Cleithenes — Man u — 
Zoroaster — Progress and Prophecies — Christianity Is Cos- 
mic — Paganism and Rome — Roman Laws — Constantine 
and the Cross — Julian — Bacon — The Wesleys — Roman 
Catholicism — Wyclif — Huss — Ridley — Franklin — Luth- 
er — Melanchthon — Zwingli — Calvin — Knox — Progress Is 
God's Order — Toleration — Erasmus — Inquisition — Wil- 
liam of Orange — Cromwell — Hampden — Milton — Euripi- 
des — Hume — Macaulay — Roberson — McCrie and Pilgrim 
Fathers — Roger Williams — The Wesleys and Liberty — 
American Liberty — Ministers Defended against Coke, 
Mills, and Others — Catholics' Threaten Evil — Whisky 
Traffic and Politicians — Bacon and Peacham — Hannibal 
Hamilcar and Personal Liberty — Blackstone and Phillips 
on Law and Liberty — Avarice — Conclusion 89 

Appendix , 120 



A GOMPEftDIU/A OF THE SABBATH 

AXD 

RELIGIOUS AND CIVIL LIBERTY. 



CHAPTER I. 

A PLEA FOR THE SABBATH. 

The title of this treatise takes us back through 
the vista of the ages to the morning of time, when 
God finished the work of creation. It is a signifi- 
cant fact that man, the chief and last work of the 
Creature, who bears the impress of God, was 
created on the sixth day, and began his earthly ca- 
reer by observing with the Creator a day of rest. 
The seventh day God blessed and sanctified, indi- 
cating to us that one day in seven should be given 
to worship and devoted especially to man's inter- 
ests. Whether these seven days are considered as 
literal days of twenty-four hours, or as periods of 
time extending throughout the ages, does not 
effect the fact for which we shall plead in this 
treatise. We maintain that God set apart one- 
seventh part of time from all secular purposes not 
only as a period of rest for mind and body, but 
also as a period for worship and moral develop- 
ment. This is a part of the divine economy for 
regulating and controlling the generations of men 

(3) 



6 The Sabbath: Religions and Civil Liberty. 

throughout the eons of time. This brings us to 
consider 

I. The Sabbath as an Institution to Be 
Perpetuated Throughout All Time. 

1. That the Sabbath was observed from the first 
as a rest day there can be no doubt. 

Although there is no specific mention of this 
day from the creation until the giving of the law 
at Sinai, yet there can be no doubt but that it was 
observed. All the facts indicate this to us. Much 
has come to us of late by the extensive research of 
the learned among the exhumed debris of the Ori- 
ential cities. These witnesses have been locked 
up in the bosom of the earth for long ages, and 
now they come to testify to the truth of Revela- 
tion by proving the common origin of all men. 
Before there was a Jew upon the earth, as appears 
from these records, the seventh day was observed 
as a day of sacred rest among the most ancient 
and widely separated nations of the globe. The 
conclusion follows that these all had a common 
origin, and learned from the same great Teacher. 
The clay tablets found among the ruins of Baby- 
lon, the. cuneiform inscriptions on the alabaster 
slabs of Nineveh, the deciphered records on the 
tombs of Egypt, as well as the Imperial Almanacs 
of China, to say nothing of the utterances in the 
poems of Hesiod and Homer, all with one consent 
bear testimony to the existence among the Gentile 
nations of a day of sacred rest in the earliest 



A Plea j- or the Sabbath. 



ages, and to this rest as occurring one day in 
seven. So " truth has sprung out of the earth." 
All this seems to find its solution in the declaration 
of Revelation: "And God blessed the seventh 
day and sanctified it." The following historic 
evidence is sufficient to establish this point, 
George Smith, noted in Assyrian researches, 
says: " I discovered among other things a curious 
religious calendar of the Assyrians, in which every 
month is divided into four weeks, and the seventh 
days, or Sabbaths are marked out as days on 
which no work should be undertaken." The fifth 
of these tablets is known as the creation tablet, 
two lines of which H. T. Talbot, F.R.S., trans- 
lates: 

" On the seventh day he appoints a holy day, 
And to cease from all labors he commanded." 

He says: " This tablet is important because it 
affirms clearly that the origin of the Sabbath was 
coeval with creation." The Babylonians observed 
the Sabbath with considerable strictness. Some 
so-called Christians would do well to note that on 
that day the king was not allowed to take a drive 
in his chariot; various meats were forbidden to 
be eaten. There were also many other minor 
prohibitions. Prof. Sayce's testimony coincides 
with the above, and he further says, " Mr. Bos- 
caman has pointed out to me the very name of 
the Sabbath under the Acadian form Sabhattu" 
According to Porphyry, the Phoenicians conse- 
crated the seventh day as holy. The Saracens 



8 The Sabbath: Religious and Civil Liberty. 

kept the Sabbath before Mohammed's time on 
Friday. Homer, who wrote 900 B.C., says: 
"Then came the Sabbath, the sacred day." 
Hesiod, Linus,* and Callimachus all allude to the 
Sabbath. Dr. Legge says: " There is a passage 
in the Chinese classics which was ancient in the 
days of Confucius, 500 years before Christ, which 
reads as follows : ' Seven days complete a revolu- 
tion.' And another, 6 on the seventh day all the 
passages [7. e.> public roads and canals] are 
closed." The Board of Rites publishes an Im- 
perial Almanac of China, in which is found a par- 
ticular character occurring thoughout the year on 
every seventh day, and that day is our Christian 
Sabbath. 9 ' According to their dictionaries, this 
character means "secret." "How it first got 
there, or what it indicates in that position, no one 
can tell. It has been there from time immemo- 
rial." Rev. W. W. Atterbury, who is thoroughly 
versed in Sabbath literature, says: "From time 
whereof the memory of man, and history and 
mythology, run not to the contrary, the division of 
time into the week of seven days has been almost 
the universal law. It prevailed among peoples 
far removed from each other, and remote from, as 
well as near to, the Asiatic center, whence the na- 
tions of men radiated — among Persians, Chaldeans, 
Egyptians, Hindoos, the ancient Chinese on the 
farthermost East, and the Scandinavians on the 
Northwest. In most of these instances it is cer- 

* Of this Linus nothing is known. 



A Plea J 'or the Sabbath. 



tain that the week revolved upon a day of rest; 
and as religious rest days, dies feriati, are found 
all through history marking the divisions of the 
year, it is altogether probable that, wherever 
the divisions by weeks existed, it was marked 
originally by the observance of rest days." The 
evidence before us justifies the conclusion that in 
olden times, as well as now, the people w r ere ac- 
customed to the Sabbath. This evidence tends 
not only to strengthen the claims of the Christian 
Sabbath, but also to establish the unity of the race, 
and thereby the one Divine source of all men. 

2. The manner in which the fourth command- 
ment vjas given at Sinai is further evidence that 
the Sabbath was in use and had been observed. 

The scene at Sinai w T as sublimely grand. 
The mountain trembled at the presence of its 
Maker; hoarse thunder crashed through the air, 
peal on peal rent the heavens as if the cliffs of 
granite were being shattered to pieces, its echoes 
dying solemnly away among the denies; livid 
lightnings lit up the sky with aw T ful brilliancy, and 
then followed the commanding voice of God in 
solemn awe, as he spake the words, "Remember 
the Sabbath day to keep it holy," a thing that 
had been known as a duty, but neglected and for- 
gotten by the Jews; and now under the most im- 
posing environments he wrote the words on a table 
of stone. " Six days shalt thou labor, and do all 
thy work: but the seventh day is the Sabbath of 
the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any 



io The Sabbath: Religious and Civil Liberty. 

work." It is enjoined upon men to work six days 
and rest one. All is made determinate, so as to 
admit of no doubt in the ages to come. The lan- 
guage of the Bible is such as to indicate the cosmic 
character of the Sabbath, and God's purpose to 
perpetuate it throughout all time; for the happi- 
ness of men, as is clearly stated in God's Word, is 
made to depend upon obedience in keeping the 
commandments, and the Sabbath is particularly 
specified among these commandments. There- 
fore in the prophecy of Isaiah (lvi. 2-7) we 
have the following statements: " Blessed is the 
man that doth this, . . . that keepeth the 
Sabbath from polluting it. Also the 

sons of the stranger, that join themselves to the 
Lord, to serve him, and to love the name of 
the Lord, to be his servants, every one that keep- 
eth the Sabbath from polluting it, and taketh hold 
of my covenant; even them will I bring to my holy 
mountain, and make them joyful in my house of 
prayer: . . . for mine house shall be called a 
house of prayer for all people." These state- 
ments, with others to the same effect, are conclu- 
sive that God has ever designed that all men every- 
where shall keep the Sabbath holy. And that by 
strict adherence to His laws, all men in every 
place, and throughout all time, shall be blessed. 
Let it be remembered that the Sabbath law stands 
as a part of a code which has become the basis of 
all common law. Judge Craft has said: " What- 
ever may be the origin of the Decalogue, whether 



A Pica for the Sabbath. n 

human or divine, the highest compliment has been 
paid to it that every one of its commandments (ex- 
cept those which provide for the duty of man to 
worship God) has been reenacted as civil law; and 
when you say, ' Thou shalt not kill ' or ' Thou shalt 
not steal,' it is only a reenacting the law of Moses 
— as much so as the Sunday law." Disguise 
this fact as you may, the very conception of true 
jurisprudence is derived from the law of Moses, 

3. Our S avion?' did not abrogate the law of the 
Sabbath, but expurgated it from the appendages 
of tradition, and by precept and example put to it 
His seal, as an institution from God to man, not 
for yews only, but for Gentiles also, to be obse?'ved 
in every period of the world's history. 

There can be found nowhere in the Word of 
Truth a single squinting toward repeal. The apos- 
tles of our Lord — on Divine authority, no doubt — 
observed the first day in lieu of the seventh day. 

This we learn in the New Testament. The 
change from the seventh day to the first was 
doubtless based upon the significant fact that the 
seventh day had its connection with adumbrations 
in the former dispensation, which had been ful- 
filled in Christ who slept in the tomb on the Sab- 
bath, that had marked the former dispensation as 
the holy day of rest, and now upon the first day 
he broke the bars of death and arose a conqueror 
from the grave. This was the signal of the final 
conquest of virtue and truth. From henceforth 
the Christian world is to celebrate their redemp- 



12 The Sabbath: Religious and Civil Liberty. 

tion, and exult in the sweet prelibation of an eter- 
nal Sabbath made possible to them by the con- 
quest of their Lord over death, hell, and the grave. 

The question of the change of the days is argued 
in the following chapter. 

4. Nature demands the septenary arrangement 
of time. 

The physical structure of man and beasts of 
burden is such that one day in seven is demanded 
to restore wasted energies and expended forces. 
This law of our being is as eternal as nature itself. 
He who set apart one day in seven for rest made 
man to conform to this law: 'so it is an essential 
sanitary law, as necessary to man as sleep and 
food. The penalties of this law do not follow r its 
violation as speedily as do the penalties of depri- 
vation of sleep or abstinence from food, but as 
certainly. The consensus of statesmen, econo- 
mists, philanthropists, journalists, workingmen's 
representatives, and even Sunday society advo- 
cates is in favor of one day's rest in seven. The 
beauty and harmony of God's works are seen in 
their versatility, adaptation, and corresponding 
adjustment. In the word of God we have the 
divine precept: " Six days shalt thou work, but 
on the seventh thou shalt do no work." In exact 
agreement is the law of our being. 

Chateaubriand, speaking of this question, says: 
" We now know by experience that the fifth day 
is too near, the tenth day too remote, to rest. 
Terror, which affected everything in France, was 



A Plea for the Sabbath. 13 

never able to compel the peasant to fulfill the 
decade, because there was want of power in human 
strength to do it, and also, as has been observed, 
in the strength of animals." A member of the 
College of Justice, of Edinburgh, refers to this at- 
tempt of France to set aside God's law in the fol- 
lowing words: " It proved a complete failure. It 
was not that the people wished more rest, but it 
was manifest that they required more ; and the Leg- 
islature thereupon repealed its former enactment 
and reverted to the measure of time appointed by 
the Creator, who knew better the physical frame 
of his creatures than the French Legislature 
thought he did." Let us add to these statements 
the testimony of Prof. Tyndall: "Most of those 
who object to the Judaic observance of the Sab- 
bath recognize not only the wisdom but the ne- 
cessity of some such institution. . . . There 
is nothing that I should oppose more strenuously 
than the conversion of the seventh day of the week 
into a common working-day." Mr. Cox, a stren- 
uous anti-sabhatarian, says: "I know of no man 
who desires the abolition of the weekly day of 
rest — an institution so plainly adapted to the 
bodily, intellectual, and emotional wants of hu- 
man nature." 

" Eternal as the constitution of man is the neces- 
sity for the existence of a day of rest," is the ut- 
terance of F. W. Robertson. I cannot leave this 
point without giving the testimony of some of the 
most renowned physicians of the world. In 1832 



14 The Sabbath: Religious and Civil Liberty. 

the British House of Commons investigated the 
effects of laboring seven days in a week compared 
with laboring six and resting one. A great many- 
witnesses were examined, among them the cele- 
brated physician, J. R. Farre, M.D., of London. 
We extract the following from his statement: "I 
have practiced as a physician between thirty and 
forty years, . . . part of my life as the phy- 
sician of a public medical institution. ... I 
have been in the habit, during a great many years, 
of considering the uses of the Sabbath and ob- 
serving its abuses. The abuses are chiefly mani- 
fested in labor and dissipation. Its use, medically 
speaking, is that of a day of rest. ... I view 
it as a day of compensation for the inadequate 
restorative power of the body under continued 
labor and excitement." After speaking of the 
restoration of the circulation by the rest of sleep, 
he further adds: " But although the night appar- 
ently equalizes the circulation, yet it does not 
sufficiently restore its balance for the attainment 
of a long life. Hence, one day in seven is thrown 
in as a day of compensation to perfect, by its re- 
pose, the animal system." To this add the testi- 
mony of Dr. Paul Niemeyer, Professor of Hy- 
giene in the University of Leipsic: " If the au- 
thor does not deceive himself, he has exhibited for 
the first time the medical reasons which demon- 
strate the necessity of the Sunday rest in a manner 
as certain as other reasons demonstrate the neces- 
sity of disinfection in case of an epidemic, or vac- 



A Plea for the Sabbath. 



cination in case of smallpox." Drs. Muzze)^, 
Strong, Haegler, and thousands of others testify 
as to the necessity of the seventh-day rest. In 
1853 six hundred and forty-one medical men of 
London, in a petition to Parliament against the 
opening of the Crystal Palace on the Sabbath for 
profit, said: " Your petitioners . . . are con- 
vinced that a seventh day of rest, instituted by 
God and coeval with the existence of man, is es- 
sential to the bodily health and mental vigor of 
man in every station of life." The evidence of 
physicians, statesmen, and political economists is of 
such importance to this weighty subject, that we 
shall intrude farther upon the reader's time to con- 
sider this additional testimony: " The Medical 
Committee of Campagna recently ordered its 
Secretary, Dr. Arzillo, to draw up answers on the 
subject (the effect of observing or not observing 
the Sabbath rest on health). The following are his 
statements in answer to the questions propounded : 
' Those who observe the Sabbath are free from 
disease, preserve longest their capacity for work, 
live longest, and die ordinarily of old age, or of 
those maladies to which old age is subject. Those 
who only partially observe the Sabbath take ill 
more frequently, and more quickly exhaust the 
vital forces. They are carried away with the 
diseases of the respiratory organs, of the nervous 
system, and of the heart. Those who spend the 
Sabbath in cultivating their vices have a short, 
miserable life, and are liable to a whole train of 



i6 The Sabbath: Religious and Civil Liberty. 

maladies.' " Wilberforce declared that he could 
never have sustained the labor and stretch of mind 
required in his early political life if it had not 
been for the rest of the Sabbath; and that he 
could name several of his cotemporaries in the 
vortex of political cares whose minds had actually 
given way under the stress of intellectual labor, so 
as to bring on premature death, or the still more 
dreadful catastrophe of insanity or suicide, who, 
humanly speaking, might have been preserved in 
health if they would have conscientiously observed 
the Sabbath. It is understood that the reference 
was to Pitt and Channing, who shortened their 
days, and to Whitebread, Castlereagh, and 
Romilly, who lost their reason by incessant work. 
Experience, observation, and history all teach us 
the same lesson ; that the Sabbath law is an essen- 
tial law of our being, and cannot be infracted with 
impunity. The most fatal consequences follow its 
violation; the penalty is paid with emaciated and 
diseased bodies, and premature death. Nor will 
the result be different if the day be spent in pleasure. 
Dr. Farre says, in speaking to this point: " I think 
that devoting to pleasure the day of repose, w T hich 
should be given to the rest of the body, and to that 
change of thought and exercise of the mind which 
constitutes the real source of invigoration amidst 
the multitudes congregated for purposes of pleas- 
ure, actually defeats the primary object of the 
Sabbath, as adapted to the higher nature of man." 
But why linger at this point? The case is clearly 



A Plea for the Sabbath. 17 

made out by the strongest testimony. The fact is 
that every thing needs rest. Even a locomotive 
engine must have rest and needs to be repaired. A 
lady once sent for a physician, who proceeded to a 
diagnosis of his patient, He said to her: " Madam, 
you are overworked; you need rest." "O do 
not tell me that, doctor; look at my tongue." 
He replied, "Well, that needs rest too." We 
may justly conclude that everything needs rest, 
and must have rest, whether it be metallic machin- 
ery or physical and mental structure. This is the 
law of nature, it is the law of God, and this law is 
imperative. 

5. Civil government must conform to the de- 
mands of nature and the law of God. 

Man is a complex being, made up of various ele- 
ments and natures, all of which harmonize and 
blend in one concrete body. His animal, moral, 
and spiritual nature have one common interest. 
Whatever subserves the demands of the one does 
no violence to the other. The same is time of his 
civil interest. Whatever is necessary for each in- 
dividual composing the commonwealth is necessary 
to the commonwealth as a whole. There is no 
conflict here. We have seen that God commands 
men as spiritual beings — his subjects — to observe 
the Sabbath. We have seen also that man's phys- 
ical structure requires him to observe the Sabbath 
as a day of rest. We shall now proceed to notice 
that 

(1) Mail's moral and civil interests demand a 
2 



1 8 The Sabbath: Religious and Civil Liberty. 

day of rest. This precludes the idea of a conti- 
nental Sunday — a day of pleasure and dissipation. 
A day of profanation totally defeats the end aimed 
at in the institution of the Sabbath. It produces 
the most baneful and deplorable results to society. 
Laborers who spend their Sabbaths in dissipation 
return on Monday — if indeed they return — to their 
work jaded and looking wan. Crime is increased 
by this profanation, society demoralized by cor- 
rupt youth, inebriated husbands, blasted virtue, re- 
vengeful lovers, and crushed innocence. The 
light goes out of many homes, while jails and pen- 
itentiaries are peopled; and the assassin's dagger 
gleams with blood, and the suicidal demon gloats 
in his conquest. The following lines are true, if 
trite and homely: 

"A Sabbath well spent 

Brings a week of content, 
And health for the toils of to-morrow-; 

But a Sabbath profaned, 

Whate'er may be gained, 
Is the certain forerunner of sorrow." 

Speaking on this subject, Prof. Curtis quotes re- 
liable German authors who say of their continental 
Sabbath — that is no Sabbath at all, that the large 
proportion of criminal and disgraceful acts are com- 
mitted on Sunday, such as immorality and drunken- 
ness. Rev. W. F. Crafts has said : " Many a maid- 
en has lost her virtue and many a youth has seized 
the murderous knife on that day." "It is a signifi- 
cant commentary on the moral influence of the con- 
tinental Sunday as compared with the British, that 



A Plea for the Sabbath. 



while the percentage of illegitimate births in Lon- 
don, a few years since, was only 4 per cent. ; in Par- 
is, 34 per cent.; in Brussels, 34 per cent. ; in Mona- 
co, 34 per cent. ; in Vienna, 54 per cent. ; in Rome, 
72 per cent. 5 ' " It appears in evidence," says the 
Sabbath Committee of the English House of Com- 
mons in 1832, " that in each trade, in proportion to 
its disregard of the Lord's day, is the immorality of 
those engaged in it." "A corruption of morals 
usually follows a profanation of the Sabbath," 
says Blackstone. Before closing the evidence 
we will add the testimony of that renowned jurist, 
Judge Hale. He said that of those who were con- 
victed of capital crimes while he was upon the 
bench, he found very few who would not confess 
on inquiry that they began their career of wicked- 
ness by neglect of the Sabbath. This statement 
of this profound lawyer has been verified through- 
out the ages. The Royal Commission of England 
states in its report: " Sunday labor is generally 
looked upon as a degradation, and it appears in 
evidence that in each trade, in proportion of its 
disregard of the Lord's day, is the immorality of 
those engaged in it." Mr. Panther, who had 
charge of some canal boatmen in England, says of 
his employers: " They have found that by depriv- 
ing the men of the Sabbath day they have become 
demoralized, entirely so." And thus the evidence 
runs. How few do we find religious among rail- 
road men, cab drivers, post office employees, and 
others who are deprived of the Sabbath rest! 



20 The Sabbath: Religious and Civil Liberty. 

A criminal under sentence of death for murder, 
a few days before his execution, drew on the walls 
of his prison the significant picture of a gallows 
and four steps leading to it. He wrote on the first 
step, " Disobedience to parents;" on the second, 
" Sabbath breaking;" on the third, " Gambling 
and drunkenness;" and on the fourth, "Murder." 
Such men as Herbert Spencer, who would detract 
from religion and magnify the innate virtue of man, 
reject all this evidence, contravene personal ob- 
servation, and also contradict the word of God. 
Hear him: "The child of Puritanic parents, 
brought up in the belief that Sabbath breaking 
brings after it all kinds of transgressions, and hav- 
ing had pointed out, in the village or small town 
that formed his world, various instances of this 
connection, is somewhat perplexed in after years, 
when acquaintance with more of his countrymen 
has shown him exemplary lives joined with non- 
observance of the Sunday." Exemplary from 
what standpoint? Not from a Biblical nor moral 
standpoint. Then only from a skeptical stand- 
point. 

(2) The civil government should be made to 
subserve the interest of its subject as a whole. 
Now if to protect the Sabbath from profanation 
by law tends to promote the prosperity of the com- 
monwealth and the security of her citizens, then 
should such a law be enacted and enforced. As 
the Sabbath is necessary to each individual, so it 
must be to the body politic. 



A Plea for the Sabbath. 21 

We do not contend for laws that will compel 
men to go to Church, but we do plead for laws 
that will allow men to be religious. Destroy the 
Christian Sabbath and you will deprive millions of 
men of the means of grace. Destroy the Chris- 
tian Sabbath and you sap the foundation of this 
government, you remove the only safeguard to 
our liberties, and create a pandemonium on earth. 
Joseph Cook says: " There can be no diffusion of 
conscientiousness adequate to protect society from 
danger, under universal suffrage, unless a day is set 
apart for the periodical moral and religious instruc- 
tion of the masses. Sunday laws are justified in 
a republic by the right of self-preservation." 
These are not idle words, but are corroborated by 
the utterances of the great and good of earth. 
From some of these we shall now hear. Hallam 
has said: "A holiday Sabbath is the ally of despot- 
ism." Hear President Mark Hopkins, of Williams 
College: "A religious observance of the Sabbath, 
or the religious Sabbath, would secure the perma- 
nence of free institutions. Without the Sabbath 
religiously observed, the permanence of free insti- 
tutions cannot be secured. The civil government, 
as based on the religious Sabbath, is an institution 
to which society has a natural right, precisely as it 
has to property." The " Father of His Country," 
George Washington, in his address to the nation, 
used the following words: " We ought to be per- 
suaded that the propitious smiles of Heaven can 
never be expected on a nation that disregards the 



22 The Sabbath: Religious and Civil Liberty. 

eternal rules of order and right that Heaven itself 
has ordained." In consonance with this convic- 
tion, we have his army order issued in August, 
1776: " That the troops may have an opportunity 
of attending public w T orship, as well as to take 
some rest, . . . the general excuses them from 
fatigue duties on Sunday. . . . We can have 
little hope of the blessings of Heaven on our arms 
if we insult it by impiety and folly. Reason and 
experience both forbid us to expect that national 
morality can prevail in exclusion of religious prin- 
ciple." To this agrees Chief Justice McLean, of 
the Supreme Court of the United States, who has 
said: "Where there is no Christian Sabbath there 
is no Christian morality, and without this free in- 
stitutions cannot long be sustained." Hon. J. R. 
Tucker, of Virginia, uttered this language: "Ah! 
my friends, break down the fence of Christianity, 
and liberty and law and civilization will perish 
with it." 

We maintain that civil law must comply with the 
demands of our physical, moral, and spiritual con- 
stitution and the requirements of the divine law. 
This is not optional with legislators, but a funda- 
mental requirement. To oppose this demand is to 
betray the sacred trust committed to the legislative 
bodies. To oppose Sunday laws is an infringe- 
ment upon humanity, and upon personal liberty, 
and an affront to God. This government is pred- 
icated upon the doctrine of the supremacy of God, 
who is acknowledged to be the highest authorit}^ 



A Pica f 07' the Sabbath, 23 

It had its origin in the thought and purpose of re- 
ligious liberty. The Bible and the name of God 
are used in administering the oath of office. Wit- 
nesses are qualified in the name of God. The 
President annually proclaims a day of national 
thanksgiving. In the face of these facts to enact 
laws antagonistic to any of God's express com- 
mandments is inexcusable effrontery. It remains 
for such men as Herbert Spencer to ridicule the 
Sabbath, and the astute philosopher, J. S. Mill, to 
maintain that " all legislation in respect to Sunday 
is an illegitimate interference with rightful liberty 
of the individual/' The animus of his teaching 
may be inferred, while the glaring inconsistency 
of this author is so apparent. For be it remem- 
bered in the same treatise he says that it is " al- 
most a self-evident axiom that the State should 
require and compel the education, up to a certain 
point, of every human being who is born its citi- 
zen." 

Now we hold that if legislation for the protec- 
tion of the moral interest of society be an infringe- 
ment upon the liberty of the individual, so legisla- 
tion for the mental culture, and for the protection 
of the natural rights of society is also an infringe- 
ment upon personal liberty. The anti-sabbatarians 
and anti-prohibitionists have a wonderful way of 
disposing of the question of civil rights and per- 
sonal freedom. They remind me of the old Hard- 
shell Baptist minister, who in advocating final per- 
severance of the saints found himself confronted 



24 The Sabbath: Religions and Civil Liberty. 

by the text, " If they shall fall away, etc./' pro- 
ceeded to construct his own grammar by which he 
solved the difficulty. "But, my brethren, they 
can't fall away, for the word ' if ' is a verb in the 
impossible mood and everlasting tense ; so you see 
they can't fall away." 

So it is with all the kith and kin who fight against 
all laws that squint of morality. They seem to for- 
get the true principles of personal liberty. The law 
holds that a man may exercise all the rights of liber- 
ty and property which are not inconsistent with 
the exercise of the rights of others. Every law that 
protects rights is an interference with the freedom 
of those who would override these rights. A strict 
Sabbath law is needed not to compel men to be 
religious, or to attend Church, but to protect the 
poor against the rich and pleasure seeking; to 
give every man one day of rest in seven, and allow 
him the privilege of attending Church, if he de- 
sire it. 

What means this effort to substitute the conti- 
nental Sabbath for the Christian, but to rob one- 
third of the people of this government of personal 
liberty? It means to deprive employees, clerks, 
and laborers of family associations, of Sabbath 
rest and Church privileges. It is too bad as it is: 
there are at our very doors hundreds of men that 
cannot keep the Sabbath and retain their places 
as employees. They are compelled to work on 
Sunday or surrender their places to others. They 
tell us that " each man's freedom would still be 



A Plea for the Sabbath. 25 

secured to him. Those who wished to spend the 
Sabbath as a day of religion would still be at lib- 
erty to do so." But this we know to be untrue. 
One man in business, who has no respect for the 
Sabbath, would force others to desecrate the day 
to prevent loss of trade. This we observe as the 
matter now stands. The anti-sabbatarians pro- 
ceed on the hypothesis that man is a mere animal, 
created for money making and pleasure. Their 
conception of manhood is debased and perverted. 
They are unmindful of the fact that moral develop- 
ment and spiritual culture are the end of human 
existence and the object of man's creation. De- 
stroy the Sabbath, and the possibility of religion 
w r ith thousands would likewise be destroyed. 
There would be, as on the Continent, empty 
churches, neglect of spiritual interest, forgetful- 
ness of God, atheism, and anarchy. 

The world has been used to Sabbath laws from 
time immemorial, as we have already seen. Con- 
stantine, Theodosius, Honorius, Leo I., Charle- 
magne, all issued their Sunday edicts. Alfred the 
Great took the Decalogue as the foundation of his 
civil code. Canute, Edward III., Richard II., 
Henry VI., and many others had their Sabbath 
laws. So we may justly conclude that Sabbath 
laws have in all ages had the highest sanction. To 
the illustrious names already quoted I wish to add 
the testimony of Daniel Webster: " The longer I 
live the more highly do I estimate the importance of 
the proper observance of the Christian Sabbath." 



26 The Sabbath : Religious and Civil Liberty. 

And now Mr. Gladstone, who says: "Believing 
in the authority of the Lord's day as a religious 
institution, I must, as a matter of course, desire 
the recognition of that authority by others. . . . 
I have experienced both its mental and its physical 
benefits, . . . and for the interest of the work- 
Ingmen of this country . . . there is nothing 
I more earnestly desire than that they should more 
and more highly appreciate the Christian day of 
rest." DeTocqueviile said to an American when 
our American Sabbath was stricter than now: 
" France must have your Sabbath or she is ruined." 
In view of the impending crisis now upon us (I 
mean the opening of the " World's Columbian Ex- 
position " on the Sabbath), I will add to the illus- 
trious names already given in support of the Sab- 
bath that of the renowned Lieut. Gen. T. J. 
Jackson ("Stonewall"), than whom no man had 
a higher appreciation of the Christian Sabbath. 
It was on the ioth of December, 1862, that he 
wrote to his friend, Hon. Mr. Boteler, the follow- 
ing: '- I have read with great interest the ' Con- 
gressional Report' of the committee, recommend- 
ing the repeal of the law requiring the mails to be 
carried on the Sabbath, and I hope that you will 
feel it a duty, as well as a pleasure, to urge its re- 
peal. I do not see how a nation that thus, arrays 
itself, by such a law, against God's holy day can 
expect to escape his wrath. The punishment of 
national sins must be confined to this world, as 
there are no nationalities beyond the grave. For 



A Pica for the Sabbath. 27 

fifteen years I have refused to mail letters on Sun- 
day, or to take them out of the office on that day, 
except since I came into the field, and so far from 
having to regret my course, it has been a source of 
true enjoyment. I have never sustained loss in 
observing what God enjoins; and I am well satis- 
fied that the law should be repealed at the earliest 
practicable moment. My rule is to let the Sabbath 
mails remain unopened.' 9 On January 17, 1863, 
he wrote to his wife: "I derive an additional 
pleasure in reading a letter, resulting from a con- 
viction that it has not been traveling on the Sab- 
bath. How delightful will be our heavenly home, 
where everything is sanctified! ' These are the 
utterances of a general that never lost a battle, a 
man who trusted the Lord for success in all the af- 
fairs of life, and succeeded where other men 
failed. Is there anything in these statements? As 
well may we ask is there anything in the state- 
ment: "Righteousness exalteth a nation: but sin 
is a reproach to any people." (Prov. xiv. 34.) 
We may as well ask is there anything in this dec- 
laration: " Blessed is the man that doeth this, and 
the son of man that layeth, hold on it; that keepeth 
the Sabbath from polluting it, and keepeth his 
hand from doing any evil." 

Yes, open this " World's Exposition," these pla- 
ces of public resort, let this national profanation of 
God's Sabbath continue, and what maywe expect? 
Let God answer in his word: " But if ye will not 
hearken unto me to hallow the Sabbath day, and 



28 The Sabbath : Religious and Civil Liberty. 

not to bear a burden, even entering in at the gates 
of Jerusalem on the Sabbath day; then will I kin- 
dle a fire in the gates thereof, and it shall devour 
the palaces of Jerusalem, and it shall not be 
quenched." (Jer. xvii. 27.) Now substitute 
"America" for "Jerusalem," and you have the 
answer to the question. Take notice that the 
Jews did profane the Sabbath, and that this pro- 
phetic threat was fulfilled to the extent of its scope. 
Did ever people suffer as did the Jews when the 
conquering cohorts of Rome, led by the intrepid 
Titus, leveled her walls and drenched her streets 
with blood? And what security have we as a na- 
tion against famine, internal feuds, war, and pesti- 
lence if we forfeit our claim to Divine protection by 
open and wanton transgression of God's law? To 
whom can we look for national prosperity and 
peace but to God? And how can we pray unto 
him as a nation while such grievous sins are com- 
mitted against him under the sanction of our laws? 

Does not France furnish us a modern example 
of Divine retribution upon a corrupt nation? Al- 
ready we have the premonitions of the coming 
tempest in broils, riots, strikes, and audacious en- 
croachments of anarchists. These are but the 
shimmerings of the pent-up fires of revenge, ani- 
mosity, envy, and disaffection that rankle in the 
bosom of men. 

But what plea is set up by those who would thus 
desecrate the holy Sabbath? We have heard none 
but "to benefit the poor." " To benefit the poor," 



A Plea for the Sabbath. 29 

alas ! How can a thing that degrades a man ben- 
efit him? How can a man by sinning against na- 
ture, against God, and against himself be profited 
thereby ? Echo answers : ' ' How ? ' ' Behind this 
pretext lies the true motive, which is to rob the 
poor, by tempting them to spend their hard-earned 
pennies in side shows, buying wooden nutmegs, 
and quaffing intoxicating beverages. This pretext 
is the same as that paraded by Judas Iscariot: 
" Why was not this ointment sold for three hun- 
dred pence, and given to the poor? This he said, 
not that he cared for the poor, but because he was a 
thief, and had the bag, and bare what was put there- 
in.'' But it is known to these pretending friends 
of the poor, who would contravene God's iaw T in 
expressions of affection ( ?) for the poor, that the 
opening of the gates of the " Exposition " and ev- 
ery other thing of the kind look more to the in- 
dulgence of the wealthier and pleasure-loving than 
to the accommodation of the horny-handed sons of 
toil. Such a plea is opposed to common sense and 
experience. It does not stand to reason, and it is 
an insult to the Christian sentiment of this common- 
wealth, and in contempt of God. It grows out of 
that hateful sin of avarice that is eating like a can- 
ker at the very vitals of this government. 

II. Dangers That Threaten the Sabbath. 

1. First of all zve would name avarice, the ene- 
my of all good. 

She is forging her chains to bind her victims in 



30 The Sabbath: Religious and Civil Liberty. 

perpetual bondage. Dante's description of this 
dread sin is suggestive: 

"A she wolf was at his heels, who in her leanness seemed 
Full of all wants, and many a land hath made 
Disconsolate ere now. That never sated is her 
Eavenous will. Still after food more craving than before." 

Not content with six days of toil, it would rob God 
of his day. This great sin is back of at least 
three-fourths of all Sabbath desecration. 

2. The government by her Sunday mail trans- 
portation and delivery is educating the -people to 
profane the Sabbath, besides forcing 150,000 em- 
ployees to desecrate this day. 

In 1810 Congress authorized the delivery of 
mail on the Sabbath. Twenty-one States protested 
against this profanation. The petitioners main- 
tained that this measure was an infringement upon 
state rights, and therefore unconstitutional. . As the 
case now stands the Fourteenth Amendment to the 
Constitution provides that " No State shall make or 
enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges 
or immunities of citizens of the United States." 
The First Amendment sets forth the following limi- 
tation: " Congress shall make no law respecting 
and establishing religion or prohibiting the free 
exercise thereof." Let us now read from the pos- 
tal law: " It shall be the duty of postmasters at all 
reasonable hours, on every day of the week, to de- 
liver on demand, any letter and ... to the per- 
son entitled to, or authorized to receive the same." 
You see the contradiction herein involved: the 



A Plea f 07' the Sabbath. 31 

Constitution provides for the religious freedom of 
ail the citizens of this commonwealth. But the pos- 
tal law says that the postmasters and employees 
shall not have religious freedom. Place beside 
this postal law the law of God, which says that 
no work shall be done on the Sabbath. To obey 
the postal law is to disobey God. To disobey 
God is to sin, and to continue in willful disobedi- 
ence is to continue in willful sin. This being true, 
how can these 150,000 postmasters and employees 
be Christians ? What right has the legislative and 
executive power of this government to deprive 150,- 
000 persons of Sabbath privileges — yea, of heav- 
en itself? But you say: " These persons are free, 
so that they need not accept these positions." 
This is true, and it is also true that if the govern- 
ment did not demand of these persons labor upon 
the Sabbath they would not work, therefore the 
government is first in the transgression, and stands 
condemned before God. 
How true this couplet: 

" Seen too oft, familiar with her face, 
"We first endure, then pity, then embrace." 

We have become familiar with this sin, and go 
on tolerating it. Yes, professed Christians con- 
tinue to accept these positions under the plea of 
necessity. " The ox is in the ditch," they say. 
Alas! that poor old ox has been in the ditch for 
about nineteen hundred years. How did he get 
in there? Confess the truth: you drove him in. 
Then let him stay there and die. Better, infinitely 



32 The Sabbath: Religions and Civil Liberty . 

better, for you that the old ox (?) die than that 
you by living in known sin send your soul into 
eternal death. We have heard the changes wrung 
upon the word " necessity " until we are sick of it. 
This word is as much abused as the words "liberty" 
and "freedom." "It is a matter of necessity, a 
question of meat and bread, for me to serve as 
postmaster," says one. Says another: "lam 
compelled to do this work for the railroad, the 
gas company, the street car company, or ' I will be 
fired out.' " Well, infinitely better to be fired out 
of your position now, than to be fired in through- 
out eternity. No man is compelled to disobey 
God. Prophets, apostles, and martyrs died rather 
than to disobey him. This martyr's spirit is nec- 
essary now to check this downward stride to ruin. 

But so long as men calling themselves Chris- 
tians, and dressed in the livery of heaven, go first 
to the post office, get their mail, read the "current 
news, and business letters, then go to the house of 
God, take their seat with sanctimonious air, take 
the sacrament and zvvpe their mouths complacently, 
and then say " Works of necessity must go on upon 
God's day," we may not hope for a change for 
the better. Or worse still, these same ensamples 
of light take pleasure rides, transact business, and 
do almost anything on the Sabbath except go to 
the class meeting, or some of them even to 
Church. 

3. The running of railroad trains on the Sab- 
bath is a gigantic evil. 



A Plea for the Sabbath. 33 

It is a public nuisance, depriving according to the 
best statistics not less than 250,000 persons of their 
Sabbath. Many of the number are members of 
the different Churches. They groan for a respite 
from labor on the Lord's day, that they may wor- 
ship God according to the dictates of their own 
conscience. Many of these are unsaved men, who 
are not likely ever to be saved, for the reason they 
are kept by their ungenerous employers from the 
purview of gospel privileges. These 250,000 men 
appeal to the Christian sentiment of this land for 
relief. There is no necessity for Sunday trains. 
Railroad magnates themselves, among whom we 
mention B. H. Young and Hon. W. D. Dodge, 
state that as much or even more can be made by 
running six days in the week. But these railroad 
men, who own a controlling interest, think they 
make money by running seven days in the week. 
So they take it in hand to make money; to make 
money at the price of human comfort, at the price 
of virtue, at the price of souls. This business, 
more than any other, leads to the profanation of 
the Sabbath, because it touches society at so many 
points. 

Stop all trains and you give 250,000 men a day 
of rest, time with their families, and the chances of 
salvation. You stop the Sunday mail business 
and thereby give 150,000 more men the immuni- 
ties of the Sabbath. You stop the demoralizing 
and debasing Sunday excursions, Sunday travel, 
and the annoyance to the public of the rush and 
3 



34 The Sabbath : Religious and Civil Liberty. 

clanking of running trains, the whistle of locomo- 
tives, the rustling of the irrepressible porters and 
cab drivers. 

What right have the millionaires to make money 
by robbing God and their employees of that God- 
bequeathed boon: the Sabbath day? Why say to 
the-poor man "Thou shalt not plow or hoe," and 
yet allow corporations to carry on their business? 
Does wealth bestow peculiar privileges upon its 
possessors? Does wealth place a man above law 
ecclesiastical and civil? Then why tolerate this 
Sabbath desecration on the part of these railroad, 
street car, and other corporations? Why allow 
this wholesale robbery of God and man to be per- 
petrated in the resplendent light of this gospel age, 
in this land of the noble and the free ? • But 
hush ! I stand with bated breath, but speak I must. 
God's professed children countenance and abet 
this business by traveling on these Sabbath dese- 
crators under various pretexts and for various 
purposes. 6 to go to Church, perhaps, or to visit, 
or to attend to some business, or for some cause. 
Are they not aware that, whatever the pretext may 
be, when they travel on the railroad or street car 
they sanction Sabbath desecration? It will avail 
nothing to say "they will run anyway." Sup- 
pose they do; that is no reason you should peipe- 
trate a wrong against humanity, yourself, and your 
God, because some one else does. As well to say 
" I will steal because some one else does," or " I 
will keep a saloon because some one else does." 



A Plea for the Sabbath. 35 

When you travel by these public conveyances on 
the Lord's day, you trample God's commandment 
beneath unhallowed feet. The encouragement 
given this illegitimate business by professed Chris- 
tians augments the demand for the continuance of 
this business. "Tell it not in Gath, publish it not 
in the streets of Askelon; . . . lest the daughters 
of the uncircumcised triumph;" but I must speak 
it; candor demands it: even ministers of the gospel 
become allies to the evil one, and abet this busi- 
ness by traveling from place to place on the trains 
on the Lord's day. "The beauty of Isreal is 
slain upon thy high places: how are the mighty 
fallen!' 5 Our hands are tied while these things 
exist. These do the cause of God more harm 
than all the infidels in the. land. Imagine a min- 
ister getting off the train on Sunday, driven to the 
church door by a coachman, entering the pulpit and 
announcing his text, " Remember the Sabbath day 
to keep it holy." Then to be consistent with him- 
self he must take away from God's word by say- 
ing, "except when it suits your convenience to 
travel on Sunday." I pray God to deliver us 
from such inconsistency. 

4. No greater evil with less extenuation is being 
fostered in our midst than the -publication and cir- 
culation of Sunday newspapers. 

I prefer to let the secular press speak out in the 
meeting, and expose this crying sin, lest newspa- 
per men raise the hue and cry of unjust dealing. 

In the issue of the 15th of November, 1871, the 



36 The Sabbath : Religious and Civil Liberty. 

New York Tribune said: "We are opposed to 
anything which tends to increase the already too 
great a tendency to break down the observance of 
the Sabbath." I am sorry to say that that paper 
has since fallen from grace. 

The Pittsburg Commercial Gazette of March 31, 
1882, said: " Those of our contemporaries who 
publish Sunday papers do not take kindly to the 
opinions expresed by the Sabbath day observers. 
This was to be expected, as they prefer to quietly 
but surely break down the observance of the Sab- 
bath day. The truth is that Sunday papers have 
no more right to publish than have merchants to 
open their stores and do business on the Sabbath. 
Sunday papers are published solely to make mon- 
ey. Were they not profitable, there would not be 
a single paper issued. The assertion, so often made 
by the advocates of Sunday papers, that more Sun- 
day work is done on a Monday morning paper 
than is done on a Sunday paper is not true, and 
they know it. This is only a pretext to throw dust 
in the eyes of the religious people. There is no 
one thing which the anti-Sabbath people rejoice so 
much in as Sunday papers. They know that once 
the daily press is conceded the right to publish on 
Sunday, by the Sabbath day observers, that it will 
be but a short time till the day will become one sole- 
ly for recreation and pleasure. Grant to the news- 
papers the right to publish s^ven days in the week, 
and it will be but a few years, till the merchants 
will claim the same privilege. And why not? ?J 



A Plea for the Sabbath. 37 

This utterance was in the Chicago Daily News 
of August 12, 1884: " The Sunday paper itself 
has created the only demand there is for it." 

The Sunday paper is made the vehicle for gos- 
sip. Choice bits of scandalous stories, rapines, 
murders, assassinations, and suicides fill its col- 
umns — a vocabulary of putrid matter, enough to 
contaminate any ordinary mind. All this finds its 
way into Christian homes, and it is gulped down by 
parents and children before starting to Church. 
No wonder the preacher has an uphill pull preach- 
ing to such auditors. No wonder they think the 
sermon stale and long. Full of the news of Con- 
gress, current prices, etc. No wonder our chil- 
dren are going to ruin after reading such stuff. 

But these are not the greatest objections to these 
Sunday papers. They deprive about one hundred 
thousand printers and attachees to printing offices, 
not to speak of the newsboys, in part or wholly of 
their Sabbath privileges. 

5. Step by step we are losing our Christian Sab- 
bath. 

Of late years the Sunday baseball craze has 
struck this nation — a perfect cyclone of demorali- 
zation. Our young people are being drawQ into 
this whirlpool of ruin by the hundreds. None can 
estimate the damage to societ} 7 of this debasing 
practice. And now, to cap the climax, fairs and 
expositions must be opened under the pretext of 
favoring the poor, but, forsooth, to make money. 
Let the poor man know that these corporations are 



38 The Sabbath : Religious and Civil Liberty. 

striking at the heart of the Sabbath. Once they 
can get a continental Sabbath, then they will re- 
quire seven days' labor for six days' pay. These 
evils are depleting our Sunday schools and lessen- 
ing the attendance at Church, steadily but surely 
as a canker eating up our moral life. With these 
evils we should class Sunday excursions and sa- 
cred ( ?) concerts. Sacred, did you say? A mis- 
nomer, surely. In fact, the devil's claptrap to 
catch the unwary. 

6. Of course the whisky venders, with infidels, 
zv ill always be found in the crusade against the Sab- 
bath. Break down the legal barriers to their Sab- 
bath traffic and you at once open the very flood gates 
of hell. Substitute the continental for the Christian 
Sabbath, and these venders will reap a harvest of 
wealth at the price of morality, virtue, and blood. 
Here avarice plays upon appetite, and appeals 
to the baser elements of- human nature, and de- 
mands the extermination of the Christian Sab- 
bath. Ah me! here is the dead line. You dare 
not obliterate this day; if so, a reign of terror and 
death will set in never before known in this fair 
land. These men are law-breakers, any way, " to 
the manner born." They are constantly violating 
our Sunday laws as the case now stands. Am I 
complaining? Be it so. The guest at the hotel 
complained to the landlord about the towel. The 
landlord indignantly said: "You are the three 
hundredth man that has wiped on that towel, and 
you are the first man that has complained." Am 



A Plea for the Sabbath. 39 

I the first to complain of this dirty towel, these 
sinks of hell? Nay. Let there go up a universal 
complaint from even/ good citizen of this govern- 
ment against all this Sabbath desecration, and es- 
pecially against these cesspools of iniquity. 

7. We are taking into the bosom of this republic 
a viper that is sucking our lifeblood. I refer to 
the vicious foreign element that is pouring in upon 
us from all the ends of the earth: communists, 
nihilists, anarchists, revolutionists, and I know not 
what. 

The very foundation of this government is trem- 
bling. Influences are at work which, if not 
checked, will speedily involve us in ruin. This 
foreign and domestic infidelic element, consorting 
with the whisky venders, and aided by cowering 
and timeserving political tricksters, presents to us 
no ordinary foe. The Philistines are upon^thee, 
Samson ! Awake ! Arise ! Why sleepeth thou 
in the lap of security? The enemies of our liber- 
ties are at work. Evidences of their aggressive 
spirit are on every hand. In 1882 the saloon 
keepers of California, by cajoling or menacing the 
Democratic party, succeeded in getting an anti- 
Sabbath plank in their political platform, which re- 
sulted in repealing the Sabbath law. California is 
now the only State in the Union that has no Sab- 
bath law. The Sabbath laws are more or less 
strict in the different States. The rule has ever 
been to allow works of necessity to be done. 
Such was the Sabbath law in Texas until 187 1, 



40 The Sabbath : Religious and Civil Liberty. 



when the law was so amended as to allow things of 
mere convenience to be done. Again in 1883 an d 
1887,* the Legislature amended the law so as to 
allow greater desecration of the Sabbath. The 
most startling thing that has occurred for many 
years, if not to say during the history of the past, 
occurred in the Senate of our own dear State, the 
grandest in the galaxy of States, during the sitting 
of the last Legislature. A bill was introduced f by 
a foreigner to destroy at a stroke all of our Sabbath 
from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. When I began to look into 
this subject I wrote to my esteemed friend, Hon. 
E. J. Simkins, of Corsicana, who has served his 
constituency in the State senate with distinguished 
ability for two consecutive terms. I received 
from him a lengthy answer, from which I now 
quote: " I am glad to see the ministers of God 
waking up on this important question, for you 
have been asleep too long already. The spectacle 
of a Texas Senate evenly dividing upon the Chris- 
tian Sabbath, and the Lieutenant Governor of State 
casting the deciding vote, against that day, is 
enough to awaken thoughtful interest. The Bible 
going out of our schools, and the country becom- 
ing Germanized, or what is much the same thing 
infidelized, and everything apparently drifting from 
the old moorings ! ?? Ministers of God asleep! 
and their flocks, too, ruminating quietly on the 
verge of an awful moral volcano that is just ready 
to break forth in an eruption that will overspread 
this land with the lava of death ! 

* Appendix C, p. 97. J f Appendix C, p. 100. 



A Plea for the Sabbath. 41 

Will we continue to lie supinely till our chartered 
rights are forever gone? Heaven forbid! For- 
bid it, Almighty God ! There can be no doubt 
that the enemies of God and man are encroaching 
upon our religious freedom. 

We have seen that the Sabbath law is the law of 
God; that it is an essential law of our being; that 
it is the basis of our moral and social fabric and 
the fundamental law of our government; that 
Sabbath laws have been enforced throughout the 
ages; that in the opinions of the best men, wisest 
jurors, statesmen, and philosophers the Sabbath is 
essential to civil liberty. Now, in the face of all 
these facts, what man laying claims to statesman- 
ship would dare reach forth his leprous hand to 
touch this ark of God? Who would have the 
effrontery to legislate against God? Who would 
dare to legislate against humanity, against himself? 
But what do you think of a politician claiming to 
be a Christian that would lend his influence and 
cast his vote against the Christian Sabbath? Why, 
only in the light of a traitor, as we do of Benedict 
Arnold; as we do of Judas Iscariot, who sold his 
Lord for thirty pieces of silver; as we do of 
Balaam, who loved the wages of unrighteousness; 
as we do of Brutus, who betrayed the trust of 
Caesar. We can think of him only as a traitor to 
God, an apostate from the faith, a traducer of 
purity, covered with the shame of -perfidy. A 
statesman, you say ! Think of such a monstrosity, 
as compared with Macaulay, Gladstone, DTsraeli, 



42 The Sabbath: Religions and Civil Liberty. 

Shaftesbury, Argyll, Bright, Broadhurst, and other 
illustrious names across the water— men who had 
depth of penetration sufficient to know the value 
of the Christian Sabbath, soul capacity to appre- 
ciate it, and the manhood to defend it. Think of 
such a political pigmy compared with the illustri- 
ous names of Washington, Webster, Lincoln, 
Seward, McClellan, Garfield, Noah Davis, Justice 
McLean, and Thomas Jefferson, who paid the fol- 
lowing compliment to the Sabbath school: "The 
Sunday schools present the only legitimate means 
under the Constitution of avoiding the rock on 
which the French Republic was wrecked." Let 
the ringing words of the immortal Blackstone in 
his commentaries confound such a driveler: 
6i The profanation of the Lord's day ... is 
a ninth offense against God and religion, punished 
by municipal law of England. For besides the 
notorious indecency and scandal of permitting any 
secular business to be publicly transacted on that 
day, in a country professing Christianity, and the 
corruption of morals which usually follow its prof- 
anation, the keeping one day in seven holy, as a 
time of relaxation and ' refreshment as well as of 
public worship, is of admirable service to a state, 
considered merely as a civil institution." Did 
you call the character that we are pursuing a states- 
man? Nay, a demagogue, a time-server. I would 
tear off the hypocritical tapestry thrown around 
such and let the world see the real political cen- 
taur beneath the f ^retentions covering. 



A Plea for the Sabbath. 43 

I now take occasion to introduce to the reader 
the author of this nefarious bill, Mr. Maetze,* 
who is a Prussian by birth. Sometime during 
the decade from 1840 to 1850 he w T as in the Ger- 
man Reichstadt, or House of Parliament. As I 
have his history, he had to flee his country on ac- 
count of revolutionary proclivities. It remains for 
this man, a foreigner t with little or nothing in 
common with the good people of this country, to put 
the knife to the throat of our liberties. This for- 
eigner, a disturber of the peace of his native coun- 
try, a revolutionist, here in our own South land, in 
this great State of Texas, the land of the brave and 
the home of the free, where our fathers with their 
sweat and blood won on the gory battlefields of 
the Alamo and San Jacinto our civil and religious 
liberty, would break down at a stroke our safe- 
guard. 

He comes under a mask with effete w r eapons 
and exploded arguments, and talks of the Sabbath 
law being an infringement of civil rights and per- 
sonal liberty. To patiently endure this would not 
be a virtue, and curtly we would now inform Mr. 
Maetze that if our laws don't suit him he can 
retire. It he prefers the continental Sunday to 
the Christian Sabbath, let him go back to Prussia. 
These foreigners are here on their own motion; 
and if our laws are not to their liking, let them go 
back from whence they came. And the sooner 
they go the better for us. I wouldn't be under- 

* Has since died, f See Appendix A, page 93. 



44 The Sabbath: Religions and Civil Liberty* 

stood as opposing good and law-abiding foreigners. 
We bid them welcome to our liberties, to our Sab- 
baths, and to our religion. But this rabble crowd 
of which Mr. Maetze seems to be a leader, w r ho 
would convert our country into a pandemonium — 
this beer-guzzling and Sabbath-desecrating element 
— we are more than willing to give tip. It is prop- 
er to say that many of these foreigners rank w r ith 
our best citizens. Thev become identified with 
our institutions and laws at once, and support them 
with fidelity of purpose. To all these we extend a 
hearty welcome. Strange to say, twelve other 
Senators* some of them the sons of Texas, reared 
in this gospel land, the creatures of Christian insti- 
tutions, who owe their all to the Sabbath teaching, 
training, and influence, joined in this diabolical con- 
spiracy against our liberties. We could have ex- 
pected no more of some of these men. Their past 
record shows them to be the allies of the saloon, the 
enemies of temperance, sobriety, and morality. 

There was a tie vote in the Senate upon this 
great question, on which, disguise it as you may, 
hung the future destiny of this great State. An 
opportunity was now given to our Lieutenant Gov- 
ernor, Mr. Pendleton, to hand his name down to 
coming generations as a true man to the Sabbath, 
to his profession as a Christian, to the poor of his 
constituency, to morality and to God. But alas ! 
we are forced to turn away with disappointment. 
How unfortunate that casting, vote ! By it the 
* See Appendix B, p. 95. 



A Plea J "or the Sabbath. 45 

Lieutenant Governor did say that God was wrong 
in commanding men to keep the entire Sabbath 
day holy. He virtually said by his casting vote 
against the Sabbath that he knew better than 
God, that he is wiser. God says, "Keep the 
day holy ; " the Lieutenant Governor says, " Keep 
seven hours of the day holy. The balance of 
the day you can sell, buy, work, play, dance, 
hunt — do as you please. Let down the gap for 
all manner of profanation," says Lieut. Gov. 
Pendleton. Seventeen hours in the twenty-four. 
What could have prompted such remarkable ac- 
tion on the part of these men? There is not a 
valid argument that could be made to support 
this measure. It is too late in the day to resort to 
the sophistic dodge of personal liberty. Nay, the 
argument of personal liberty is on the other side 
of this question, as wne have already seen. Then 
what can they plead in extenuation of an act so 
plainly at variance with every interest of this gov- 
ernment? It will avail these men nothing to tell 
an enlightened constituency that they are antisab- 
batarians from principle. How can a man oppose 
the moral, civil, and religious interest of his State 
from principle? How can he oppress the poor by 
putting them at the mercy of the rich from princi- 
ple? How can he stand up and legislate against 
God from principle ? Principle indeed ! Why, 
such a plea does not stand to reason. It is simply 
impossible for such an act to be based upon prin- 
ciple. If these men were ignorant of the facts and 



46 The Sabbath: Religious and Civil Liberty. 

principles demonstrated in this treatise, then they 
are too stupid ever to be trusted again with our sa- 
cred rights. But if they acted from -policy, if this 
be a strategic^ political act to secure the votes of the 
foreign and saloon element (and we believe this 
to be true), then these men deserve nothing but 
contempt. To-day we arraign them before the 
bar of an enlightened constituency for having 
sought by their votes to outrage religion, trample 
upon morality, and sacrifice liberty. We believe 
that we voice the sentiment of true American citi- 
zens, and a law and order loving people, when 
we say that these men should never again receive 
the suffrage of the people of this State for any of- 
fice whatever. They have proven themselves un- 
safe legislators. 

Our devotion to the Sabbath should be as 
marked as that of the old Scotch woman that Mr. 
Irving, the English actor, claims to have met near 
Balmoral. In speaking of the queen, Mr. Irving 
said: "The queen is a good woman." "I sup- 
pose she is gude enough; but there are things I 
canna bear." " What do you mean? " asked Mr. 
Irving. "Well, I think there are things which 
even the queen has no recht to do. For one thing, 
she goes rowing on the lake on Soonday; and it's 
not a Chreestian thing to do." " But you know, 
the Bible tells us — " " I knaw," she interrupted, 
angrily, " I've read the Bible since I was so high 3 
an' I knaw ev'ry word in't. I knaw about Soon- 
day fishing and a' the other things the gude Lord 



A Plea for the Sabbath. 47 

did; but I wan you to knaw, too, that I don't 
think any the more, e'en of him for a doin' it." 

Our devotion to God and principles should 
cause us to lose sight of all favoritism and be the 
ruling motive of life. No man should escape un- 
censured who is guilty of flagrant acts of violence 
to the best interests of his country, it matters not 
who he may be, king, priest, or subject. Nor 
should we be slow to stamp with condemnation all 
acts that look to the degradation of our race. 
Reformations have never been effected by any- 
thing less than the intrepidity of a Paul, the au- 
dacity of a Luther, the inexorableness of a Knox, 
the zeal of a Whitefield, and the consecration of a 
Wesley. A cow r ering and a time-serving spirit 
among professing Christians is as fatal to reform 
as among the professional politicians. Let Chris- 
tians be free to speak against the acts of the dema- 
gogues, who w^ink at crime and consort with the 
evil by supporting the whisky traffic and Sabbath 
desecration. Let them know that they w T ill be 
held to account at the tribunal of Christian senti- 
ment as well as at the ballot box. I would be un- 
true to nature and guilty of ingratitude were I not 
to mention with commendation, in this connection, 
the name of our esteemed fellow-citizen, E. J. 
Simkins, of Corsicana, Tex., who so promptly 
met Mr. Maetze's prepared address in support of 
his demoralization Sunday bill with a vigorous im- 
promptu speech. Such men as he and the other 
twelve who voted with him are the hope of the 



48 The Sabbath: Religious and Civil Liberty . 

country in this day of degeneracy. True patriot- 
ism still lives in the bosom of such men. 

III. The Appeal. 

Let us not be discouraged. There are from 
20,000,000 to 25,000,000 of professing Christians 
in these United States, who favor the Christian 
Sabbath. Besides these there are, perhaps, 15,- 
000,000 of philanthropic people outside of any 
Church who stand with these Christians in senti- 
ment. Back of these is the Lord of the heavens 
and the earth, who is pledged to help those who 
contend for the right. We are opposed only by 
from 25,000, to 35,000, Seventh Day Baptists 
and Adventists, who are in league with all sorts 
from the most abandoned prostitutes to the time- 
serving politicians, all of whom number from 20,- 
000,000 to 25,000,000. All we need to succeed is 
to become fully alive to the situation and our dut}r 
respecting it. 

Fellow-citizens of this grand republic, ye sons 
and daughters of light, arise, and shake this slum- 
ber from your eyes ! The issue is upon us ; contend 
for home, country, and' for God! Let us write, 
make speeches, deliver lectures, preach sermons, 
and hold mass meetings, until a sentiment is 
formed that will so fortify our holy Sabbath that 
no intruder will dare approach to destroy it. Let 
the women come to the front and begin to where- 
as, and the men will begin to resolve. But we 
must not stop at this ; we must organize law and 



A Plea for the Sabbath. 49 

order leagues throughout the land, to see that our 
present laws are enforced against this lawless ele- 
ment, that is fast riding down all that is dear to 
us. We must push the battle against Sunday 
mails, trains, and newspapers, until we have con- 
quered and given back the Sabbath to the half 
million people who are being robbed of it by these 
desecrators. 

Our greatest danger lies not in political dema- 
goguery, great as this is, but in Christian defec- 
tion. We may not expect to arrest the tidal sweep 
of Sabbath desecration until ministers and Church 
members keep the day holy. As long as profess- 
ing Christians ride on railroads and street cars 
on the Sabbath, and get their mail, read secular 
papers, visit, prepare sumptuous dinners, take 
pleasure rides, and buy meat, milk, ice, and such 
like on the Sabbath we are powerless as reform- 
ers. In 1880 a general Sabbath convention at 
Boston petitioned the Legislature of Massachusetts 
for improvements in the Sabbath laws. The leg- 
islative committee replied: " The trouble is with 
you of the ministry and Churches. So long as 
you buy Sunday papers, and use Sunday trains, 
bakeries, markets, and barber shops, little can be 
done for Sabbath observance." Whatever may 
be the pretext under which these things are done, 
the effect on society is the same. And because of 
such a precedent, others go to greater lengths in 
profaning the day. 

I appeal to you my countrymen, to the philan- 
4 



50 The Sabbath : Religious and Civil Liberty. 

thropic, to consecrated womanhood, to all who 
love law and order, virtue and God, rally to this 
cause. 

This time-honored institution must live. The 
eternal laws of nature and morality demand it. 
The eternal fitness of things demands it. The 
sin-cursed generations of men, millions of whom 
are now sunken into the depths of woe, plead 
with you for this sacred day. 

In dread apprehension of eternal damnation, the 
dusky sons of toil, suspended over the vortex of 
an awful hell, upon life's slender thread, call for 
the respite from labor, the sacred influences of 
home, and the immunities of the gospel which the 
Christian Sabbath alone can bring them. The 
ever blessed God, who hung out the heavens in 
their beauty and decorated the earth with infinite 
artistic skill, demands that this day be kept holy. 
To commemorate our deliverance from the thral- 
dom of sin and death, by the resurrection of our 
Lord from the tomb, who conquered death in his 
own dominion, and threw over the grave the cor- 
uscation of eternal glory, let us preserve intact 
the sanctity of this day: Upon this depends the 
salvation of the nation, the glory of the Church 
of Christ, and the happiness of men. Upon it 
concenters our joy, and upon it culminates all our 
hopes. 

And finally viewing this day as a type of eternal 
rest, where the good of all ages shall rejuvenate in 
the blissful regions of a glorious immortality, I 



A Plea J "or the Sabbath. 51 

submit this question, with the beautiful lines of 
Christopher Wordsworth : 

O day of rest and gladness; 

O day of joy and light; 
O balm of care and sadness, 

Most beautiful, most bright. 
On thee, the high and lowly, 

Before the eternal throne, 
Sing ' Holy, holy, holy,' 

To the great three in one. 

Thou art a cooling fountain 

In life's dry, dreary sand; 
From thee, like Pisgah's mountain, 

We view our promised land; 
A day of sweet reflection 

Thou art a day of love ; 
A day of resurrection 

From earth to thinsrs above. 



CHAPTER XL 

THE SABBATH WAS CHANGED FROM THE SEV- 
ENTH TO THE FIRST DAT BT JDIVINE 
A UTHORITT. 

6 'The word ' Sabbath' means to rest from la- 
bor, to lie by, to keep holy day, to cease." (Ge- 
senius.) "A season or day of rest; one day in 
seven appointed for rest or worship, the observ- 
ance of which was enjoined upon the Jews in the 
decalogue, and has been continued by the Chris- 
tian Church with a transfer of the day observed 
from the last to the first day of the week; called 
also the ' Lord's day,' in commemoration of the 
resurrection of Christ upon that day." (Webster.) 
These definitions contain the gist of the argument to 
follow. God, having instituted the Sabbath at the 
creation of the world, designed that it should be 
perpetuated universally throughout all ages . There- 
fore he made it possible for all men everywhere 
to observe it. It received the sanction of God at 
Sinai, and Christ also by his example and teaching 
indorsed the Sabbath, 

I. Does the Validity" and Design of This Day 

Depend Upon a Specific Day, the Seventh 

Day That God Blessed and Sanctified? 

This question and many others were settled by 

the apostles. It was hard for the Jews to break 

away from the old forms of worship when they 

(52) 



Changed by Divine A uthority. 5 3 

embraced Christ as their Saviour; hence we find 
that many of them still clung to the rites and ap- 
pendages of the Mosaic economy. Among these 
there arose teachers who gave the apostles no little 
trouble, because they urged the Christians to ob- 
serve the rite of circumcision and the seventh-day 
Sabbath. The result was that at first many 
of the Christians kept both the first and seventh 
days, just as some do now. But the apostles ear- 
nestly sought to correct this error. To this end 
Paul wrote to the Colossians, saying: " Let no 
man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or 
in respect of a holy day, or of the new moon, or of 
the Sabbath days: which are a shadow of things 
to come; but the body is of Christ." (Col. ii. 
16, 17.) In commenting on these words, Mr. 
Benson says: " The whole of the ceremonial law 
being abrogated by Christ (Col. ii. 14), Christians 
are under no obligations to observe any of the 
Jewish holy days, not even the seventh-day Sab- 
bath. Wherefore if any teacher made the observ- 
ance of the seventh day a necessary duty, the Co- 
lossians were to resist him. But though the 
brethren in the first age paid no regard to the sev- 
enth-day Sabbath, they set apart the first day of 
the week for public worship.' 5 Eadie says on 
this same passage: " Nor were they to hallow the 
Sabbaths, for these had served their purpose, and 
the Lord's day was to be a season of loftier joy, 
as it commemorates a more august event than ei- 

o 

ther the creation of the universe or the exodus from 



54 The Sabbath: Religious and Civil Liberty . 

Egypt. " Wordsworth says: " Sabbaton, the sev- 
enth-day Sabbath, the Jewish Sabbath, which as 
far as it was the seventh-day rest had been ful- 
filled by Christ resting in the grave." As far as I 
know, this is the accepted construction among 
commentators upon this important passage. So 
this question was settled in the apostolic age, and 
left to rest thus, until the rise of the Seventh-day 
Baptists, in 1678. They are but few in number, 
amounting in 1880, including the German organi- 
zations, to 9,609 communicants and 86 ministers. 
The Seventh-day Adventists numbered at the same 
time 15,570 communicants and 144 ministers. 
These figures give an aggregate of 25,409 (exclu- 
sive of the Jews) who are at war with the Chris- 
tian Sabbath on religious grounds. What the 
Seventh-day Adventists lack in numbers they 
make up in activity and vehemence in the unre- 
lenting war that they wage upon the Christian Sab- 
bath. 

We answer the above question negatively for the 
following reasons: 

1. If God had designed the seventh day ufon 
which he rested to be the world 's Sabbath through- 
out the ages, he would have expressly command- 
ed it. 

This he did not do. In Genesis ii. 2, 3, which 
gives an account of the institution of the Sabbath, 
we have a simple statement of two facts. One is 
that God rested on the seventh day; the other, 
that he sanctified the dav on which he rested. If 



Changed by Divine A uthority. 55 

he had intended that the identical time observed 
by him as a period of rest should be perpetuated 
throughout all ages, he would have so arranged 
the eons of time as to preclude all doubt and avoid 
the possibility of mistake. But we are left in 
doubt in the incipiency, as to when the day began 
and ended. Who can decide from the statement 
before us whether the day began at 12 o'clock 
midday or 12 o'clock midnight, or at sunrise or 
at sunset? All the evidence we have on the sub- 
ject is contained in the account of the creation, in 
the book of Genesis. In the fifth verse of the first 
chapter we have the announcement: "And God 
called the light day, and the darkness he called 
night. And the evening and the morning were 
the first day." A literal translation is: "And the 
evening was, and the morning was day one." 
The same statement is made of the succeeding 
days down to the seventh, where it is said that 
God ended his work and rested on the seventh 
day from all his work; that he blessed the seventh 
day and sanctified it. As the time of reckoning 
the day has varied at different periods and among 
different nations, who would dare assert at what 
hour the day began and ended in the beginning of 
time? The accepted theory of many scientists is, 
that the days referred to in Genesis are not literal 
days, but periods of time stretching through many 
years. This theory has many advocates even 
among the orthodox. If this should be true (wheth- 
er true or false it does not effect the truth of the 



56 The Sabbath: Religious and Civil Liberty. 

Bible), what becomes of the Sabbatarian theory?* 
Of course no long period of time stretching through 
a period of years can be observed by men as a 
Sabbath of rest. But ^uch was the Sabbath that 
God observed, if these days represented long peri- 
ods of time. We find the Sabbatarian theory be- 
set with insuperable difficulties in the beginning of 
this argument, and these difficulties will be found 
to increase as we proceed. 

2. All that the law content-plates and enjoins is 
that after six days of labor the seventh day shall be 
observed as a day of rest and vjorship^ and to com- 
memorate some important event. 

This is the only reasonable, practical, and scrip- 
tural view of this question. To contend for any- 
thing else is to contend for the impossible. \n the 
preceding chapter we have shown that the nations 
of the earth have ever held to the septenary divis- 
ion of time. That before there was a Jew upon 
the earth, after six days of labor, the seventh was 
observed as a day of rest. . After the institution of 
the Sabbath at the creation, for a period of two 
thousand five hundred and thirteen years, not a 
word has come down to us through the Scriptures 
upon this subject. Not an utterance is heard, 
until we stand at the base of Mount Sinai and look 
upon the imposing scene. The whole mountain is 
wrapped in smoke and flame, and trembling as if 
with fear and dread at the majesty of its mighty 

* We use the word " Sabbatarian " for convenience to apply to 
seventh-day Sabbath advocates. 



Changed by Divine A uthority. 5 7 

Creator. The blasts of the trumpet bid the peo- 
ple draw nigh to the scene, while the echoes of 
the mighty thunders, commingling in sublimest 
strain, warn the people not to touch the mount. 
Beholding with awe, they see Moses ascend the 
mountain, where God announces his sovereignty 
and proceeds to say: "Remember the Sabbath 
day to keep it holy." During the period of two 
thousand five hundred and thirteen vears that had 
intervened from the institution of the Sabbath to 
this remarkable transaction, the Hebrew people 
had come upon the stage of action, had been in 
bondage, and had lost, because of oppression or 
through neglect, their Sabbath. This is evident 
from Nehemiah ix. 13, 14: "Thou earnest down 
also from Mount Sinai, . . . and madest known 
unto them thy holy Sabbath." And Ezekiel xx. 10— 
12 : " Wherefore I caused them to go forth out of 
the land of Egypt, and brought them into the wil- 
derness. ... I gave them my Sabbaths, to be 
a sign between me and them, that they might know 
that I am the Lord that sanctify them." In the 
first text it is said that God made known to the Is- 
raelites the holy Sabbath. In the second text he 
says he gave them his Sabbaths. If they had not 
lost the Sabbath, this language is misleading. But 
it is evident that they had lost the Sabbath. In re- 
enacting the Sabbath law, God did not reckon from 
the first day of creation, but from the first day 
upon which manna fell. This fact is clearly estab- 
lished in Exodus xvi. 2-30. Read and consider. 



58 The Sabbath: Religious and Civil Liberty \ 

The people murmured against Moses and Aaron. 
The Lord promised bread from heaven, that the 
people might gather a certain portion every day for 
five successive days, that on the sixth day they 
were to gather twice as much as on the preceding 
days, (Verse 22.) "And he said unto them, This 
is that which the Lord hath said, To-morrow is the 
rest of the holy Sabbath unto the Lord." (Verse 
23.) "Six days ye shall gather it; but on the 
seventh day, which is the Sabbath, in it there shall 
be none.'"' (Verse 26.) Some of the people went 
out on the Sabbath day to gather, and found none. 
"And the Lord said unto Moses, How long refuse 
ye to keep my commandments and my laws? See, 
for that the Lord hath given you the Sabbath, 
therefore he giveth you on the sixth day the bread 
of two days: ... let no man go out of his 
place on the seventh day. So the people rested 
on the seventh day." (Verses 27-30.) Hence- 
forth the seventh day from the falling of the man- 
na was to be the rest day of the children of Israel, 
not as a token or sign of the rest following the 
work of creation, but as sign of their deliverance 
from Egyptian bondage. They now had liberty 
to keep God's commandments; and the Sabbath 
just given them was to be a rest day from all serv- 
ile labor, a holy day for worship, and a commem- 
orative day, signifying their freedom from Pha- 
roah's yoke. The evidence of this we have at hand : 
" Six days thou shalt labor, and' do all thy work: 
but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord 



Changed by Divine A nthority. 59 

thy God. . . . And remember that thou wast 
a servant in the land of Egypt, and that the Lord 
thy God brought thee out thence through a mighty 
hand and by a stretched out arm: therefore the 
Lord thy God commanded thee to keep the Sab- 
bath day." (Deut. v. 13-15.) As the hebdoma- 
dal cycle brought the Sabbath, the seventh day 
from the falling of the manna, the people joined 
in singing paeans to the God of their salvation for 
the wonderful deliverance brought to them as a 
nation. The Sabbath was a sign to them in a par- 
ticular sense, as it signified a particular thing, and 
in w r hich sense it w T as confined to the Jew r s. In all 
this no attempt is made to compute time from the 
creation. Not a word is said about the seventh 
day upon w T hich God rested, nor have we here the 
slightest intimation of that event. A new event 
has transpired to which the Jewish Sabbath refers. 
But all that God intended in the outset is here met. 
The only difference between this Sabbath and the 
original Sabbath is in the thing signified : the first 
signified the creation ; this signified the deliverance 
of the Jews from bondage. God's purpose is as 
fully fulfilled by the one as by the other; all that 
he ever contemplated is that after six days of la- 
bor the seventh should be observed as a day of 
rest and worship. Therefore the law reads: " Six 
days shall work be done, but on the seventh day 
there shall be to you a holy day, a Sabbath of rest 
to the Lord." (Ex. xxxv. 2.) But for conven- 
ience and to avoid confusion, that uniformity might 



60 The Sabbath: Religious and Civil Liberty . 

be maintained in preserving the sanctity of the day, 
God has given at different periods of the world's 
history three important events to commemorate, 
from which the Sabbath is reckoned, and to which 
it is made to refer — to wit: the creation of the 
world, the deliverance of the children of Israel 
from Egypt, and the resurrection of our Lord from 
the tomb. We call attention to the fact that it is 
not essential to the sanctity of the day, nor a pre- 
requisite element to the fact, that the Sabbath 
should throughout all time fall upon the identical 
day upon which the e^pnt transpired that it signi- 
fies. The spirit of the law is met by the intent. 
The Sabbath that has the prestige of the ages, 
that has stood the test of centuries, and has had 
the strongest defenders among the learned and the 
pious, and upon which concenters both exoteric 
and esoteric evidence is valid. It was not essential 
to the Jews that they should keep the very day on 
which the manna ceased to fail as the Sabbath, 
but it was essential that they should keep one day 
in seven as holy to the Lord. Neither is it essen- 
tial to us that we keep the identical day upon which 
Christ arose from the dead, but it is necessary that 
we keep one day in seven holy to the Lord, and 
that we regard that day as commemorative of the 
resurrection of our Lord, a sign of our deliverance 
from the thraldom of sin and the bitter pains of 
eternal death. It is also necessary that there be 
uniformity for the convenience of worship and 
rest, and to preserve the sanctity of the day, and 



Changed by Divine A uthority. 61 

also that the environments of the civil law may be 
thrown around the day, to protect it from the des- 
ecration of the vile. 

3. As God designed religion to be practicable , he 
has commanded, nothing that is impracticable. 

A commandment requiring all men to keep the 
seventh day, reckoning from the creation, would 
be impossible. In this age of the world, amid the 
confusion of chronologists, who can say that this 
or that is the seventh day? We call attention to 
the fact that the chronology of the Bible is that of 
the Masoretic Hebrew Bible, which is followed 
by Bede and adopted by the reformers. This 
makes the world 4,004 years old to the Christian 
era. But the Septuagint, w r hich Dr. Kennicott 
and others argue is preferable, makes the world 
1,500 years older. Here is a discrepancy of 1,500 
years of time between the best chronologists. 
This being true, who would have the audacity to 
say that the day we call Saturday is the seventh 
day from creation — the day upon which God rest- 
ed? To undertake to maintain such a proposition 
is to betray a spirit of dogmatism , if not to say 
recklessness, that deserves the contempt of all lov- 
ers of truth. It is out of the question to determine 
any particular day when there exists such a dis- 
crepancy of years. The fact is there is no period 
from which we can reckon days in the beginning 
of creation, since the Sabbath observed by the 
Jews was reckoned from the first day the manna 
fell. We would not dare assert that we keep the 



62 The Sabbath: Religious and Civil Liberty \ 

identical day, the first day of the week upon which 
Christ arose from the tomb. Our chronology, 
which was introduced by the Roman abbot, Dio- 
nysius Exiguus, in the sixteenth century, which 
became general during the reign of Charlemagne, 
dates the Christian era December 25, 754 Anno 
Urbis — i. e., from the founding of the city of Rome. 
Dr. Schaff says: "Nearly all chronologists agree 
that this is wrong by at least four years. Christ 
was born A.U. 750 (or B.C. 4), if not earlier." 
This statement he follows with an elaborate and 
cogent argument. ( Schaff s " History of the Chris- 
tian Church," Vol. L, p. 112.) So here again is a 
discrepancy among the chronologers. If we have 
no way by which we ,can certainly determine dates 
(and w 7 e have not), neither can we determine 
whether or not we keep the first day upon which 
Christ arose. But we are not concerned about 
that, since we meet the divine requirement, and 
comply with the law. We fulfill the conditions for 
which the day was instituted. It therefore makes 
no difference whether we keep the first, second, 
seventh, or any other day. We have a rest day, a 
day holy to the Lord, a day for worship, which is a 
sign of our redemption from the condemnation of 
sin and death, as it commemorates the resurrection 
of Christ. But who can say that we do not keep 
the very day upon which Christ rose, and that this 
is the identical day upon which God rested, the orig- 
inal seventh, and that it is the very day given to the 
Jews for their Sabbath? However, there is no evi- 



Changed by Divine A athority. 63 

dence either in favor of, or against this. How can 
there be amid the mutation of time that has produced 
a discrepancy of years? We hardly know wheth- 
er to pity the credulity of the man, or to condemn 
the audacity of the dogmatist who contends for a 
veritable Sabbath, the identical day upon which 
God rested. This question of days is a sealed ques- 
tion, that no man can lay open. 

4. The theory of the Sabbatarians is opposed by 
a physical barrier. 

The difference of longitude and of latitude 
makes a difference of time. Hence it is a physic- 
al impossibility for all men to observe the identical 
time as a day holy to the Lord. The diurnal rota- 
tion of the earth, and the inequality of the days as 
we travel from the equator to the poles, varying in 
length from twenty-four hours to six months, op- 
pose an insuperable barrier to this theory. What 
shall those do who have six months day and six 
months night, if this theory be true? How T can 
they, and we, conform to the same day? This 
fact of itself is sufficient to prove the absurdity of 
the Sabbatarian theory. The sun is ever rising 
and setting. Traveling west or east, on reaching 
the 180th meridian of longitude, there is a sudden 
change of time. So steamers and trading vessels 
between San Francisco and Japan, on crossing 
this line, immediately change their calendar going 
or coming. Our antipodes keep one day and we 
another. We may reckon from the same event 
and keep the same day in numerical order, but we 



64 The Sabbath: Religious and Civil Liberty \ 

cannot keep the identical time. All this clearly 
establishes the fact that God never intended that 
the validity of the Sabbath should be made to de- 
pend upon a fixed day. If so, he would have so 
arranged the time table that there could have been 
no variation. On the great dial plate of nature 
there had been indelibly inscribed in fixed char- 
acters the cycles of the ages. No such arrange- 
ment has been made ; and if we are to be held to 
the Sabbatarian dogma, we are lost in the laby- 
rinth of the ages, and there is nothing left us but 
the wail of despair couched in the words of Ad- 
dison : 

u The ways of Heaven are dark and intricate, 
Puzzled with mazes, and perplexed with error; 
Our understanding searches them in vain." 

But we are not left in such a state ; we have the 
blessed Sabbath, a day that has the prestige of the 
ages, hoary with time, revered by men and 
blessed of God. 

II. The Change from the Seventh to the 
First Day. 
That there was a change of days at the resur- 
rection of Christ there is no doubt. That at that 
time the Jews were keeping the seventh day ac- 
cording to their reckoning from the falling of the 
manna, and that the Christians after the resurrec- 
tion of Christ began to keep the first day of the 
week, there is no doubt. 

1. It is a significant fact that man' 's first day 
was the Sabbath. God finished the work of 



Changed by Divine A uthority. 65 



creation on the sixth day and rested on the seventh. 
Man, having been created on the sixth day, began 
his earthly career by observing the Sabbath ; then 
followed six days of labor. As man began 
the work of the first dispensation by observing 
the Sabbath, so did men begin the work of 
the second dispensation by observing the Sab- 
bath, the first day, and then followed six secu- 
lar days. Thus it appears that there is an exact 
correspondence in this fact between the first Sab- 
bath and the Christian. This is a significant co- 
incidence which I do not believe is the work of 
chance, but of design to impress men with the 
great necessity of observing this holy day. The 
fullness of time had now come, Jesus was crucified 
and buried, and he lay in the grave on the old 
Sabbath, the Jewish Sabbath, which had ful- 
filled its end as a sign of the deliverance of the 
Jews from Egyptian bondage. Now the first day 
dawned upon the world, the conquering Son of 
God in triumph broke the bands of death and 
arose a conqueror from the womb of nature. 
Never did the sun usher in a day so glorious. It 
was the jubilee of the universe. At creation's 
birth the morning stars shouted aloud for joy, but 
at redemption's consummation the earth shook, 
the rocks were rent, and graves were opened and 
the dead resuscitated by infinite power, sprang 
into life and walked the streets of Jerusalem. 

"'Twas great to speak a world from naught, 
'Twas greater to redeem." 

5 



66 The Sabbath: Religious and Civil Liberty '. 

It were meet that men should observe the prim- 
ative Sabbath in token of the rest of God after he 
had made the world, and because he had sancti- 
fied the day. It were meet that the Jews should 
observe the Sabbath given them in the wilder- 
ness by Jehovah. It were also meet that the world 
should commemorate an event that directly in- 
volves the destiny of all men by observing the day 
as sacred that marked the event. So we may 
note that the change was a reasonable one, just 
such a change as we might expect to take place in 
view of the facts. At the death of Christ the 
Jewish cult terminated in a more perfect system 
of ethics, with rites less cumbersome. Nothing 
was destroyed or abolished, but many things 
were fulfilled, and some changed; the bloody 
sacrificial types, adumbrations of Christ, were ful- 
filled in his death. The seal of the covenant of 
grace (not the covenant itself) was changed from 
circumcision to baptism. The paschal feast, which 
signified the passing over of the Israelites by the 
destroying angel, gave place to the eucharistic 
supper, which commemorates the death and suffer- 
ing of Christ. The Sabbath was changed from 
the seventh day, which was a sign of the deliver- 
ance of the Israelites from Egypt, to the first day, 
which commemorates the resurrection of the Lord. 
Those who prefer the Jewish Sabbath to the 
Christian thus far set aside the great fact of our 
salvation and go back to the old Jewish questions. 
To such the apostle speaks in the following words: 



Changed by Divine A uthority. 67 

" But now, after that ye have known God, or 
rather are known of God, how turn ye again to 
the weak and beggarly elements, whereunto ye 
desire again to be in bondage? Ye observe days, 
and months, and times, and years. I am afraid of 
you, lest I have bestowed upon you labor in vain." 
The Jewish seventh-day Sabbath was connected 
with ceremonial institutions. The Jews had 
lugged in many appendages, and had rendered 
the day burdensome. This day was a type of the 
Christian Sabbath, and now that the Christian 
Sabbath has been inaugurated $ there was no need 
of the continuance of the seventh-day Sabbath. 
It had fulfilled its mission, and was now a burden 
rather than a delight. It gave way to its antitype, a 
day unincumbered by Jewish ceremonies and tra- 
ditions. To all who would resurrect this day the 
apostle says, he is " afraid of them," lest he had 
wasted his labor upon them. 

2. The transfer was evidently of divine appoint- 
ment, or it could never have been made. It was 
not made by the Gentiles, but by the Jews them- 
selves. What induced them to make the change? 
They were much attached to their institutions, and 
clung to them with deathless tenacity. It was not 
all the Jews that made the change, but those that em- 
braced the Saviour and his teachings. The others 
remained in unbelief and continued to observe the 
seventh day. Then the believing Jews observed 
the first day, while the unbelieving Jews kept the 
seventh. This increased the virulence of the 



68 The Sabbath: Religious and Civil Liberty \ 

latter against the former, and with other things 
superinduced the spirit of persecution. Nothing 
but divine authority could have induced the change, 
for around the seventh-day Sabbath clustered the 
memories of the past and associations that ren- 
dered the Jews famous among the nations of the 
earth. But as a matter of fact the change was 
made, and that fact continues to this day as 
strongly attested as the sacrament of the Lord's 
Supper. If the change was not made in the apos- 
tolic age and under divine authority, then the ques- 
tion is : By whom and at what time was the change 
made? The Sabbatarians allege that the change 
was effected by Constantine, the Roman Emperor. 
But this statement is self-contradictory, for the 
Christians had observed the first-day Sabbath for 
more than three hundred years before the edict of 
Constantine respecting the Sabbath was. issued. 
This edict was the first European civil enactment 
upon the Sabbath question, but many others fol- 
lowed at different times.. In A.D. 311, Galerius 
issued an edict of toleration in connection with 
Constantine and Licinius. In that document he 
declared that the purpose of reclaiming the 
Christians from their willful innovation and the 
multitude of their sects to the laws and discipline 
of the Roman State was not accomplished (by the 
bloody persecution waged); and that he would 
now grant them permission to hold their assem- 
blies, provided they disturbed not the order of the 
state. 



Changed by Divine A uthority. 69 

At Milvian Bridge, near Rome, October 27, 
A.D. 312, Constantine conquered Maxentius. A 
short time after (313) Constantine and Lucinius 
met at Milan and issued a new edict of toleration, 
that went farther than the first and granted protec- 
tion to the Christians. It was on March 7, A.D. 
321, that Constantine issued his Sunday law, 
which reads as follows: " Let all judges, inhabit- 
ants of the cities, and artificers rest on the venera- 
ble day of the sun. But husbandmen may freely 
and at their pleasure apply to business of agricul- 
ture, since it often happens that the sowing of grain 
and the plowing of vines cannot so advantageously 
be performed on any other day, lest by neglecting 
the opportunity they should lose the benefits 
w 7 hich the divine bounty bestows upon us." Bear 
in mind these dates, which we are careful to give 
that our case may be clearly made out. 

Long before this edict, as will appear from the 
evidence that follows, the Christians had observed 
the Lord's day, which chanced to fall on the Sun- 
day in question. This edict is not the language of 
a decree establishing a rest day for Christians, but 
that of legislation protecting a da)^ already held 
sacred. Nothing can be plainer, for there is not 
the remotest intimation here of establishing a day 
of worship any more than in the edicts that have 
followed from age to age. Theodosius, in A.D. 
386, prohibited all business and shows upon this 
day; and in 392 he prohibited contests of the cir- 
cus, theatrical games, and horse races. In A.D. 



70 The Sabbath: Religious and Civil Liberty . 

440 Leo I. issued his edict, which reads as follows: 
' 6 It is our will and pleasure that the holy days, 
dedicated to the Most High God, should not be 
spent in sensual recreations, or otherwise profaned 
by suits of law. . . . As to the pretense that 
an opportunity may be lost by this rest [of secur- 
ing crops], this is a poor reason, considering that 
the fruits of the earth do not depend so much on 
the diligence and pains of man as on the efficien- 
cy of the sun and the blessings of God. We com- 
mand, .therefore, all, whether husbandmen or oth- 
ers, to forbear work on this day of the resurrection. 
For if other people [meaning the Jews who re- 
jected Christ] keep the shadow of this day in a 
solemn rest from all secular labor on the Sabbath 
[the seventh day], how much rather ought we to 
observe the substance, a day so ennobled by our 
gracious Lord, who saved us from destruction." 
Why not claim this as the beginning of the Chris- 
tian Sabbath, for here is more the semblance of 
primordial legislation than the edict of Constan- 
tine ? But alas for the Sabbatarians ! here, too, we 
find nothing but respect paid to an existing institu- 
tion. Leo says that the Jews by observing the 
seventh day kept only the shadow, while the Chris- 
tians kept the substance, a day so ennobled by our 
Lord, who saved us from destruction. In refuta- 
tion of the allegation made by the Sabbatarians 
that Constantine inaugurated the Christian Sab- 
bath, we have many and competent witnesses who 
vindicate fully and clearly the validity of our holy 



Changed by Divine A uthority. 7 1 

Sabbath. The epistle which bears the name of 
" Barnabas, " in existence in the second century, 
says : " We keep the eighth day with joyfulness, on 
which Jesus rose from the dead." Ignatius was 
the disciple of St. John, the apostle, and he surely 
knew the faith and practice of his leader and 
teacher. Therefore his testimony must be conclu- 
sive. He says: " Those who w r ere brought up in 
an ancient order of things have come to the pos- 
session of new hope, no longer observing the Sab- 
bath, but living in the observance cf the Lord's 
day; on which our life also has sprung up against 
him and by his death." Justin Martyr, who wrote 
about A.D. 120, says: " Sunday is the day on 
which we hold our common assembly, because it 
is the first day on which God, having wrought a 
change in the darkness and matter, made the 
world; and Jesus Christ our Saviour on the same 
day rose from the dead, for he was crucified on, 
the day before, that of Saturn; and on the day 
after that of Saturn, which is the 'Day of the Sun,' 
he appeared to his disciples." Dionysius, Bishop 
of Corinth, about A.D. 170, says: " To-day we 
have passed the Lord's holy day, in which we 
have read }^our epistle." Clement, presbyter at 
Alexandria about A.D. 189, speaks of " the true 
Gnostic as keeping the Lord's day in commemo- 
ration of the Lord's resurrection." Bardesanes 
writes about the close of the second century: 
" Wherever we be, all of us are called by the same 
name of the Messiah, ' Christians; ' upon one 



72 The Sabbath: Religions and Civil Liberty. 



day, which is the first of the week, we assemble 
ourselves together." Cyprian, A.D. 247, speaks 
of the Lord's day as sacred, and as at once the 
eighth and the first day." We have the testimony 
of Eusebius, Tertullian, Origen, Anatolius (Bishop 
of Laodicea), Victorius, Athanasius, and many 
others to the same effect. 

Before we leave this feature of the subject we 
will quote from the teachings of the apostles a doc- 
ument written, according to the consensus of the 
scholars, not later than forty years after the death 
of the last apostle > and while many were yet living 
who had heard St. John. We quote from chapter 
fourteen: "But every Lord's day do ye gather 
yourselves together and break bread* and give 
thanks, after having confessed your transgressions. 
. For this is that which was spoken by the 
Lord." Is not this sufficient? Do we desire more 
evidence still ? Then listen to the heathen writer* 
Pliny the Younger, in his letter to Trajan, the em- 
peror, who wrote in the second century. He says 
the Christians "were accustomed to meet on a 
stated day before sunrise to sing a hymn to Christ 
as to a god." This was evidently the Lord's day 
upon which they met. So the allegation brought 
by the Sabbatarians that Constantine inaugurated 
the Christian Sabbath stands clearly refuted. It 
is admitted by eminent defenders of the Saturday 
Sabbath that within a hundred years after the 
apostles the Sabbath idea had been transferred to 
the Lord's day. So again we press the question: 



Changed by Divine A nthority. 73 

By whom and at what time was the change made 
from the seventh to the first day, if not by divine 
authority under the apostolic administration? Let 
it be remembered that the burden of proof does 
not fall upon us, but upon the little band that would 
overthrow the faith of the Christian world and fill 
the land with confusion. But the defenders of the 
seventh-day theory have been forced to acknowl- 
edge that within a hundred years after the apostles 
the Sabbath idea had been transferred to the 
Lord's day, as shown by the teachings of Tertul- 
lian, that " on the day of the Lord's resurrection 
Christians should defer their business lest they 
give any place to the devil. ? ' Being forced to re- 
linguish this claim, they have changed their tactics 
to some extent. The editor of the Outlook, the 
leading paper of the Seventh-day Baptists, says: 
" We make no attempt to show that the Sunday 
was not devoted to religious worship and Church 
assembling. All this we concede to have been 
done from an early time. Neither do we attempt to 
prove that in Europe the Church observed the Sab- 
bath to any great extent after the fifth century; but 
what we shall prove is that the Sunday, previous to 
the sixteenth century, was never considered by the 
Church to be the Sabbath, was not called the Sab- 
bath, and therefore the assumption that the Sab- 
bath was changed by divine authority or apostolic 
example, from the seventh to the first day of the 
week, at the resurrection of Christ, is merely an 
assumption, without one particle of proof." 



74 The Sabbath: Religious and Civil Liberty. 

If it were true as set forth in the above extract, 
that the first-day Sabbath was not called by the 
specific name 6t Sabbath" in the earlier centuries 
of this era, that would not invalidate the day. 
There is an infallible test given us by the Master 
respecting false prophets, that applies to the case 
in hand: "By their fruits ye shall know them." 
And another similar to that was meant to apply to 
his own divinity: " My doctrine is not mine, but 
his that sent me. If any man will do his will, he 
shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, 
or whether I speak of myself." Apply these tests 
to the Christian Sabbath, and they will be found to 
meet every condition of these principles, as we 
shall see further on. The question does not turn 
upon the name given to the day. It is not a ques- 
tion of names, but of facts. The question is: Does 
the first-day Sabbath answer the end designed ? 
Does it meet the requirements and conditions of a 
Christian Sabbath? Does it serve the same pur- 
pose under the Christian dispensation that the sev- 
enth-day Sabbath did under the Mosaic dispensa- 
tion ? "We will here consider the cognate character 
of the institutions. Dr. Orr has said: "The points 
of analogy, however, are so numerous that the better 
word w T ould be identical." i. Both are rest days 
for the bodies of men and for the beasts of burden. 
2. They are both holy days, ov/ned and blessed of 
God, and set apart for public congregational wor- 
ship, days for observing the ordinances of the 
Church. 3. Both stand connected with an impor- 



Changed by Divine A nthority. 75 

tant event, and are made to commemorate it. 4. 
And both are types of something future : the sev- 
enth-day Sabbath was the type of the Christian 
Sabbath, and the Christian Sabbath is a type of 
that eternal Sabbath that awaits the people of God 
beyond the grave. 

The mathematical axiom is here apropos : Things 
that are equal to the same things are equal to each 
other. These days, being equal to the same things, 
are equal to each other. The seventh-day Sab- 
bath having served its purpose as a part of a cere- 
monial administration, an administration of adum- 
brations, was fulfilled and supplanted by the 
Lord's day. The Jews when they met to worship 
were aroused to gratitude by a retrospective glance 
at. their deliverance from Egypt's yoke, and a 
prospective faith in abetter inheritance, a superior 
form of worship, less cumbered and transcendent- 
ly glorious. To this fact the apostle refers when 
he says: "And these all, having obtained a good 
report through faith, received not the promise: 
God having provided some better thing for us, that 
they without us should not be made perfect." As 
already stated, the seventh-day Sabbath was a type 
of the Lord's day. The Jews were loath to give 
up the shadow for the substance, and because of 
their great attachment for their former feasts and 
rest days the apostles had no little trouble in keep- 
ing out these from the worship of the early Church. 
And this is true of other Jewish forms. It was to 
rebuke this effort to ingraft Jewish forms upon the 



76 The Sabbath: Religious and Civil Liberty . 

Christian Church that the apostle wrote to the Co- 
lossian Christians: "Let no man therefore judge 
you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of a holy 
day, or of the new moon, or of the Sabbath days: 
which are a shadow of things to come." (Col. ii, 
16, 17.) And in Hebrews x. 1-9 he says: "For 
the law having a shadow of good things to come, 
and not the very image of the things. 
He taketh away the first, that he may establish the 
second." The Jewish Sabbath was included in 
the things that were taken away, that the Chris- 
tian Sabbath, superior in some particulars, might 
be established, that the type, the shadow, might 
merge into the substance. 

The Christian Sabbath differs from the Jewish 
in that greater liberty is enjoyed. It is free 
from the appendages of tradition that rendered the 
Jewish a burden. It differs in that the Jewish was 
restricted to a national history, and made a com- 
memorative sign of a national event. The Chris- 
tian Sabbath commemorates an event that involves 
the destiny of all men, and is connected with a 
cosmic plan that contemplates the elevation of the 
nations of the earth. To all men it is a type of an 
eternal rest. It matters not by what name you 
may call it. It answers its end. It fulfills the con- 
ditions of a Sabbath such as is befitting the 
grand system of which it is a part. It has all the 
prestige and environments that in any sense are 
prerequisite to validate any claim. But to proceed 
with the argument. 



Changed by Divine A uthority. 77 

3. The Neva Testament furnishes as -proof ^posi- 
tive of the change from the seventh to the first day 
as the Sabbath, 

It is true that the apostles did sometimes resort 
to the Jewish synagogue on the seventh day, the 
old Sabbath, but simply as an expedient to get 
the ear of the Jewish worshipers, just as we fre- 
quently have service on Saturday as a matter of 
expedience, but in no way to sanction the claim 
set up by the Sabbatarians. 

(1) Let us consider that this day was pecul- 
iarly honored by the resurrection of our Lord 
from the grave. In this it has a peculiar mark 
and distinction from all other days. Christmas 
day, which has the distinction of commemorating 
the birthday of our Lord, is held in honor by all 
professing Christians ; but strange to say there are 
those who profess to honor Christ who would de- 
grade and profane the Christian's holy day that 
witnessed the triumph of life over death, the day 
of conquest, the day of redemption. It is also 
significant that Christ had his first meeting with 
his disciples on the first day — in the evening of the 
same day of His resurrection. And the fact that 
his second appearance after the resurrection was 
just one week from the first appearance and on the 
first day goes quite far in fixing the sanctity of the 
day, and stands as a pledge that his presence shall 
be manifested to his people in the coming ages, 
when assembled upon that day, for His worship. 
This day was also honored with the fulfillment of 



78 The Sabbath: Religions and Civil Liberty . 

the prophecies relative to the baptism of the Holy 
Spirit— for upon this day was the Pentecost, ever 
memorable as the event when full-orbed salvation 
burst upon the earth in all its splendor and hal- 
lowedness; the harbinger of victory over death, 
hell, and the grave; the signal of the victory of 
the cross over all principalities and powers. Was 
ever day like this, so blessed of God and honored 
of men? These two grand events are enough to 
render this day sacred forever, and to perpetuate 
it as the Lord's day throughout all time. 

(2) The apostles observed the Lord's day, or 
the first day of the week. So we have the state- 
ment: "And upon the first day of the week, when 
the disciples came together to break bread, Paul 
preached unto them." (Acts xx. 7.) The dis- 
ciples came together to break bread, to celebrate 
the Lord's Supper on the first day of the week, 
and Paul preached unto them. The early Chris- 
tians took collections at their services just as we 
do, to meet current expenses and to assist the 
poor. These weekly collections were taken on 
the days that they met to worship. Respecting 
these collections the apostle says: " Now con- 
cerning the collection for the saints, as I have 
given order to the Churches of Galatia, even so do 
ye. Upon the first day of the week let every one 
of you lay by him in store, as God hath prospered 
him, that there be no gatherings when I come." 
(1 Cor. xvi. 1, 2.) If these collections were tak- 
en on the day that the Christians met to worship, 



Changed by Divine A uthority. 79 

and that day was the first of the week, then the 
first day of the week w r as the day that the early 
Christians regarded as sacred, or as the Sabbath. 
So, then, the fact is clearly established that the 
Christians in the apostolic age did observe the first 
day of the week as the Christian Sabbath. This 
day, as we have already seen because it was ren- 
dered sacred by the resurrection of the Lord, re- 
ceived a specific and distinct name: the Lord's 
day; a hallowed day, to which all the prophecies 
pointed as the culminating event of the great re- 
medial plan; the Lord's day in a sense that no 
other day can be ; a day not to be profaned by men 
either by doing ordinary work therein or seeking 
pleasure thereon. St. John speaks of this day by 
its specific name: " I was in the Spirit on the 
Lord's day, and heard behind me a great voice, 
as of a trumpet." (Rev. i. 10.) This text does 
more than demonstrate the fact that this day was 
denominated the Lord's day, for it also reveals to 
us the fact the Apocalyptic vision of St. John was 
given upon that day. This intensifies the sacred- 
ness of the day. But long before this, the 
Psalmist, looking down through the roll of the com- 
ing years by prophetic foresight, forestalled his- 
toric statements in the sublime language: "The 
stone which the builders refused is become the 
head stone of the corner. This is the Lord's do- 
ing; it is marvelous in our eyes. This is the day 
which the Lord hath made; we will rejoice and 
be glad in it." What day is referred to? Evi- 



80 The Sabbath : Religious and Civil Liberty. 

dently the Lord's day, the first day, the day upon 
which the Lord rose from the grave, the day 
that resuscitated the cherished hopes of a sin- 
cursed earth, the day that threw over the grave 
a coruscation of light that dispels all gloom, a 
day in which rejoicing angels caught up the refrain 
of earth's paeons, and sent back the watchword: 
" Hallelujah, for the Lord God omnipotent reign- 
eth." With the Psalmist we can say: "We will 
rejoice in it." 

4. This day has been and is being peculiarly hon- 
ored of God. 

There never was a day like this. It was made 
glorious by the resurrection of our Lord; ren- 
dered ever memorable by the grandeurs of the 
Pentecost, when the sanctifying presence and 
power of the Holy Spirit, the paraclete, came to 
abide with the Church as never before. . This day 
was signalized by the appearance of the Lord after 
his resurrection unto his disciples. It was ren- 
dered sacred by the apostles and early Christians 
who assembled together on that day to worship; 
and favored with the Apocalyptic vision of St. John. 
This day has been revered by confessors and mar- 
tyrs, by the noble and the ignoble, and by the good 
and wise. It has stood the test of the centuries 
for nearly nineteen hundred years. And to-day it 
is the glory of men in all the walks of life, whether 
rich or poor, learned or unlearned, saint or sinner. 
This day is ever to be reverenced by men because 
it is honored of God. It stands interwoven into 



Changed by Divine A uthority. 8 1 

the very texture of the Christian system. Destroy 
this day and you destroy the system. If you go 
back to the seventh-day Sabbath, you destroy the 
significance of the day, and revert to the Jewish 
sign of deliverance from bondage. You resusci- 
tate an effete cult and substitute a form for the 
substance. More than 400,000,000 people are di- 
rectly committed to this day. It is a part of their 
system, a part of their spiritual life, because of its 
vital connection with their spiritual supply. Mill- 
ions upon millions have from age to age received 
their spiritual life upon this day. Sunday follow^-* 
ing Sunday the witnessing Spirit has manifested 
his presence and power as he did on the day of 
Pentecost at his first coming in such wonderful 
power. Conviction, repentance, regeneration, jus- 
tification, and sanctification have accompanied the 
preaching of the word on this holy day. Upon it 
children, young men, and maidens have caught 
the inspiration, while the middle-aged and the old, 
looking out into the bright -prolepsis^ have shouted 
victory from the humble chapel to the magnificent 
structure festooned in rich drapery. The echoes 
of salvation have been heralded from the centers of 
civilization, until the heathens in the regions beyond 
have realized the impulse of the spirit and sent 
back the watchword: "Thy kingdom come." 
Reign on, thou blessed Jesus, reign on, until like 
a sea of glory the light of thy holy Sabbath day 
becomes the signal of conquest to all the nations 
of the globe ! This day, hoary with the frost of 
6 



82 The Sabbath: Religious and Civil Liberty. 

the ages, majestically attested by angels and the 
ever blessed God, is the glory of man. In the 
faith of this day our mothers and fathers have 
lived in the full assurance of hope, and come 
down to death in glorious triumph. In the face 
of all these things who would desecrate this holy 
day? The covetous through greed of gain, epicu- 
reans for sensual indulgence, the skeptical through 
contempt for the truth, and the vile in hatred of 
the good, would destroy this day. 

But why should the little band of Sabbatarians 
"manifest so much hatred for the day? Why are 
they so dogmatical as to seek to rob a nation of a 
rest day rather than have any impediment thrown 
in the way of their proselytism? It is mere jargon 
to talk of reversing the order of things, and re- 
storing the seventh-day Sabbath. The present 
order cannot be reversed. We cannot go back to 
the seventh day. This is evident from the fact 
that the seventh-day advocates have made no prog- 
ress to speak of. Although they have been advo- 
cating this question for more than two hundred 
years, there is at present only a little band of them 
numbering about 35,000. During this period the 
adherents to the Christian Sabbath have reached 
many millions. Such a reversal would require a 
radical change in the faith of the Church. It 
would be an impeachment of the piety and wisdom 
of the good and wise who have gone before us. It 
would require the rewriting of history. To advo- 
cate this change tends to confuse the mind of the 



Changed by Divine A uthority. 8 



o 



uninformed. It genders strife and produces skepti- 
cism. It confuses society and fosters hardness and 
alienation among neighbors. A change can better 
no one 9 while it smacks of fickleness on the part of 
those who advocate it, and lessens confidence in the 
truth. It tends to destroy the Sabbath entirely. 

It is plainly a violation of the Divine will. Rev. 
W. F. Crafts makes the following points on the 
Sabbatarians: "Before they can thus turn back 
the dial of the nations they must clear up seven 
difficulties: i. Can the example of God's creative 
week, whose ' days ' are generally considered by 
Biblical scholars and scientists as long periods, be 
consistently cited as a binding precedent for rest- 
ing on Saturday, until it is proven that God's rest 
from his creative work w r as on Saturday? (Com- 
pare Gen. ii. 4; Ezra vii. 9; John viii. 56.) 2. 
Since the Bible reckons time from the birth 
of Adam (Gen. v. 3), how can it be shown that 
the first Sabbath of human history was not the 
first day of its first week? 3. If Saturday was the 
sacred day of Adam, how doe<s it happen that the 
nations, except the Jews, observed Sunday as their 
most sacred day? 4. If Saturday was the sacred 
day before the Exodus, how does it happen that 
God commanded the Jews to break it by march- 
ing, in their exodus from Egypt, on that day? 5. 
How can the literalism of the seventh-day theory 
be reconciled with the fact that one who travels 
around the world loses or gains a day, and also 
with the fact that no day begins or ends at exactly 



84 The Sabbath: Religious and Civil Liberty . 

the same time in any two remotely separated places ? 
6. Since seventh-day Christians find that they have 
made in the last six centuries almost no headway 
in changing the Christian Sabbath back to Satur- 
day, how do they explain the fact that the com- 
plete change of the seventh day to the first was 
made in the early Christian Church in less than 
two centuries, if there was no divine warrant for 
it ? 7. How can the claim that the change of day 
was a serious and sinful enormity, wrought by ' the 
man of sin who changes times and laws' (An- 
drew's Preface, IV.), be reconciled with the fact 
that the richest pentecostal blessings of God have, 
from the first, fallen upon Christians as they have 
gathered for worship on the first day of the week? 
' The divine blessing on the (first day) Sabbath,' 
says Dr. Dwight, ' has been too evident, too uni- 
form, and too long continues to admit of doubt „' ' 

Recapitulation. 

1. The Bible does not specify when the day be- 
gan and when it ended at the institution of the 
Sabbath. It simply states that the evening and 
the morning were the first day, and so on down to 
the seventh day. This is an indication that the 
reckoning of the day began with the evening. 

2. The validity of the Sabbath does not depend 
upon a fixed and specific time extending through- 
out all ages; for such an arrangement is impos- 
sible, being precluded by the mutation of time 
during the ages agone, by nature herself, and by 



Changed by Divine A uthority. 85 

the fact that there is no such history establishing 
such a day. 

3. God only designed that one day in seven 
shall be held sacred for man's good and His glory, 
and the day thus held be made to commemorate 
some great event. The original Sabbath was 
made to commemorate God's creative work. The 
Jewish Sabbath, given to them in the wilderness, 
was a sign of their deliverance from Egypt. (Deut. 
v. 13, 15.) The third great event was the resur- 
rection of Christ, and our Sabbath is to com- 
memorate that fact. 

4. N. B. That it is the seventh day that is to be 
kept holy. A day, the seventh day, after six days 
of labor, the next day, the seventh day, is the 
Sabbath. Nothing is said about a particular day 
to be observed throughout all time'. Not a word 
is to be found in the record about reckoning from 
a given date to determine with definiteness the 
Sabbath. On the contrary, we have the three 
events from which the Sabbath has been reckoned^ 
the creation, the falling of the manna, and the 
resurrection of Christ. The first and the second 
events are cosmic; they pertain to all the world, 
and the Sabbath that commemorates them is the 
world's Sabbath. The second event was restrict- 
ed to the Jews, being a part of their history; so the 
Sabbath commemorating that event was the Jewish 
Sabbath, and is to this day, and was confined to 
the Jews after the resurrection of Christ until re- 
cently. Again, we say that it is the seventh day 



86 The Sabbath: Religious and Civil Liberty. 

after six days of labor that is to be kept holy. 
This idea is in strict harmony with the letter of 
the law. "Six days thou shalt labor, and do all 
thy work: but the seventh day m the Sabbath of 
the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any 
work." But to prevent confusion and to have 
conformity, at the beginning of the three great 
events specified, God gave sanction to the day 
that should be observed ; and that day, according to 
the best chronological account, has been observed 
thoughout these three periods of the world's his- 
tory marked by the events in question. The first 
period stretches through 2,513 years. The second 
event stretches through a period of 1,491 years. 
The third event has reached a period of 1,992 
years, and is to continue to the eschatology of all 
things. 

The Sabbath was Changed from the Jewish 

Sabbath, the Seventh Day, to the 

Christian Sabbath, the First Day. 

1. This change has the sanction of the Lord, 
who rose from the grave on that day and made 
his first two appearances upon that day. 2. It has 
the sanction of the apostles, w r ho worshiped upon 
that day. Upon it they took collections, preached, 
and administered the sacrament. And they also 
discouraged the Christians from observing the 
seventh-day Sabbath. 3. The allegation that 
Constantine changed the day is refuted by the 
Scripture testimony given above, and by the testi- 



Changed by Divine A uthority. 87 

mony of the fathers; by the terms of the edict 
itself, and by the fact that the edict was not issued 
until more than three hundred years after the 
Sabbath was changed. 4. The fact remains that 
the change was made, and that it was made by the 
Jews themselves, and that fact remains to this day 
more fully settled upon the world than ever before. 
Considering the nature of the Jews, their stead- 
fastness to existing institutions, their national pre- 
dilection to all that relates to them as a nation, 
their seclusiveness, with distinctive peculiarities 
that tend to separate them from all other people, 
and their natural antipathy to every thing that is 
averse to their rites and ceremonies, who wroild 
dare say that anything less than divine authority 
could ever have induced them to give up the Jew- 
ish for the Christian Sabbath? But the change 
w r as demanded by the facts involved. To disas- 
sociate the Jews from the forms and ceremonies of 
Judaism changes were necessary. Otherwise they 
had never given up these forms. So the whole 
manner and style of worship was changed. The 
officiating priest, with bleeding victim and holo- 
caust, gave place to the unpretentious preacher, 
who points to the propitiation of our sins through 
Jesus Christ our Lord who offered himself once 
for all to redeem us to God. The rite of circum- 
cision gave place to baptism; the passover, to the 
eucharist; and the yezvish seventh-day Sabbath, to 
the Christian first-day Sabbath. Jewish feasts also 
were relinquished for Christian celebration days 



88 The Sabbath: Religious and Civil Liberty \ 

such as Christmas and Easter Sunday. While 
from the seventh day patronage was withdrawn, 
and interest waned in it, around the first day 
there was the intense concentration of the life of 
the Church. 5. Our Sabbath stands attested by 
the highest authority possible. God has in many 
ways given sanction to the Christian Sabbath. 
Would he sanction a wrong thing by blessing it as 
he has blessed this day? Has not his displeasure 
rested upon individuals and nations who have 
profaned this day? We could here present the 
reader with much proof of this fact if any were 
needed, but common observation teaches all men 
that this is true. Again, has not God's blessings 
been upon individuals and nations that have re- 
spected and honored this day? So this day car- 
ries the credentials of the Lord Jesus, of the Holy 
Spirit, of the everlasting Father who is over all 
and above all, the apostles, of martyrs, and con- 
fessors, of popes, bishops, and councils, Roman 
Catholics and Protestants and all professing $eoj>le 
from the first to the sixteenth century, the Jews ex- 
cepted. It has the indorsement of Luther, Calvin? 
Knox, and the Wesleys, the great reformers. It has 
been the subject of legislation from Constantine 
down to the present day. And finally none would 
destroy it but the vicious, the depraved, the covet- 
ous, the pleasure-loving, skeptical, and the dog- 
matical. It has stood the test of the ages, it still 
abides, and it will continue to the end of time. 



CHAPTER III. 

THE INCEPTION, PROGRESS, AND PERFECTION 
OF RELIGIOUS AND CIVIL LIBERT T. 

I. Inception. 
At the beginning of the creation, at the majestic 
touch of an infinite God, order arose from the in- 
ane, and teeming spheres flew into space, to track 
their orbits throughout time. God spake, "Let 
there be light," and darkness fled before the 
heavenly luminaries. In his own image and like- 
ness God created man, and laid contribution upon 
universal empire for his glory and happiness. 
Man's authority extended over the land and over 
the sea, and his charge from God was, " Subdue 
it; " therefore he could say: 

" I'm monach of all I survey, 
My right there is none to dispute." 

Man's high endowments of mental and moral fac- 
ulties indicate to us the possibility of wonderful 
achievements. There was none to oppose, noth- 
ing to antagonize, no jarring elements, no con- 
fluent tides. His government was complete. His 
liberty was perfect in his sphere as man, as God 
in his sphere is perfect as God ; for he was looking 
"into the perfect law of liberty, and continuing 
therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer 
of the work, was blessed in his deed." 

This was the inception of liberty — -perfect liber- 

(89) 



90 The Sabbath: Religious and Civil Liberty. 

ty. This God-given liberty is the quintessence 
and embodiment of all freedom. Personal and 
civil liberty are found and embraced in the scope 
of this higher liberty, this divine freedom. But 
for the fall, there never had been thraldom, servi- 
tude, nor bondage, natural nor spiritual. By the 
fall man reduced himself to the most abject slavery. 
He entailed this slavery, with all its attendant mis- 
ery, upon his posterity. Consequent upon this, 
came disruption, disintegration, and deterioration, 
till the lowest depths of human degradation were 
reached. 

Let me call especial attention to this fundamen- 
tal truth. 

Liberty is a -primordial -principle contained in 
a life force. That life for ce\s the gospel; that life 
force is the Christ of the gospel. Hence Paul, the 
great apostle to the Gentiles, said: " For the law 
of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me 
free from the law of sin and death." And one 
greater than Paul hath- said: " If the Son there- 
fore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed." 

Taking for granted that this premise is admitted, 
we shall proceed to build our argument upon it, 
not fearing its validity to warrant the conclusion 
we shall reach. We must briefly scan the his- 
tory of the past, that we may prove our position, 
which, be it remembered, carries with it the idea 
that civilization is the outgrowth of the gospel. 

At an early date of the world's history the bab- 
bling tribes of the earth were scattered from Babel 



Inception, Progress, and Perfection. 91 

to find their homes in congenial climes. Ages 
on ages of darkness, mist, and fog begirded the 
world, with only here and there the scintillation of 
liberty, except as found with some eminent pa- 
triarchs, as Abraham, with whose descendants the 
germ of liberty grew into a theocracy. We shall 
take no steps into the occult labyrinths of antiquity, 
to speculate upon tribal organization, or com- 
pare one rude government with another. Tribal 
organization is lost in the very night of time. 

2. The Aryans are said to be the fir st people that 
instituted a state. 

The struggles of ancient Greece, to throw off 
tribal society and adopt modern political society, 
extended over some centuries of time. The same 
is true of Rome. In Greece, Cleisthenes, B.C. 
509, by his legislation brought out the modern idea 
of a state. But all this was far short of our ideal 
of civil liberty, and even up to this point of devel- 
opment, who can say that the life force was absent? 

Far down the annals of time, somewhere be- 
tween 1,280 and 880 years B.C., Manu (Munoo) 
wrote his code, which, while it contained many 
good things, falls infinitely below the true concep- 
tion of liberty. Along with Manu we shall class 
Zoroaster, the Persian, and Confucius, the Chi- 
nese. Their writings are not comparable to the 
Pentatuch. In the Pentateuch we find the princi- 
ples of liberty. The life force assumed form at 
first in the patriarchal government, then in the theo- 
cratic, and next in the monarchial form of govern- 



92 The Sabbath: Religious and Civil Liberty. 

ment. But religious liberty was with the Jews re- 
stricted, and hedged about by rites and ceremonies. 
But throughout all these years of Jewish history 
there was a gradual development of God's plans. 
Among the most wonderful prophecies of the Old 
Testament stands Nebuchadnezzar's dream. He 
saw an image composed of four kinds of metal, 
which represented the four great kingdoms: Bab- 
ylonian, Grecian, Medo-Persian, and Roman. 
A small stone was cut out without hands and smote 
the image and broke it in pieces. Prophecy is 
history forestalled. So in this case we have a 
most wonderful prediction, which in many of its 
particulars has been fulfilled. The little stone has 
broken the image in pieces. The day is hastening 
and will fully dawn, when, to its minutest detail, 
this prophecy shall have been fulfilled; then the 
work of the gospel shall culminate in the complete 
overthrow of all feudal systems, serfdoms, and 
anarchies. Then bondage, thraldom, and oppres- 
sion shall be things of the past. Then nations 
shall war no more ; for this little stone will have 
become a great mountain and will fill the earth; 
for Christ must " reign till he hath put all enemies 
under his feet." It is true that our Lord hath 
said that " my kingdom is not of this world; " but 
it is also true that a whole is made up of its parts, 
without the least of which it could not be a whole; 
that the spiritual kingdom was not made for the 
temporal kingdoms or governments of men, but 
that which is temporal to subserve the demands 



Inception. Progress , and Perfection. 93 

of the spiritual. Let it be remembered that man's 
corporeal organism, with all its functions and 
environments, such as personal and civil liberty, 
is had as the mere accident of an earthly existence, 
to subserve the one great end : man's freedom and 
perfection as a spiritual being. To this end God 
gave us the perfect law of liberty. 

3. This brings us to consider the grandest -period 
that marks the pages of history. 

Up to this time, the day w r hen Jesus came to the 
culmination of his sufferings upon the cross, and 
exclaimed with nature's expiring throes, " It is 
finished," and yielded up his spirit, but little had 
been accomplished to secure perfect liberty. But 
this agony upon the cross, this suffering, this 
fountain of blood and this death were Heaven's 
pledges to man of the final conquest of God's own 
forces, over all earthly powers and Satanic cohorts. 
From henceforth this internal force, this life pow- 
er, the power of the gospel, the liberty or law 
force of Christ, is to enter more fully upon its mis- 
sion. 

Up to this hour there had been, in the broad 
sense of the term, no cosmic religion; no systems 
of truth; no principles of moral ethics, nor code 
of civil laws adapted to, and guaranteeing civil and 
religious liberty to all nations. We have already 
noted the fact that the Jewish system of ethics 
(moral, civil, and religious), was restricted to the 
Jewish commonwealth. The heathen cults' were 
all essentially national, with no cosmic element. 



94 The Sabbath : Religious and Civil Liberty, 

The Jewish had a cosmic element, for it had the 
"life force" But now a new era dawns upon the 
world, a remarkable period in the history of free- 
dom. From Jerusalem this dynamic force went 
forth, borne in earthen vessels, incorporate with a 
few obscure persons, some of whom had been 
fishermen and tax-gatherers, destined to join bat- 
tle with two great forces. 

(1) The first enemy was Judaism, which had 
now become a mere hull, a defunct compact; it 
had served its end; the spirit of life having de- 
parted and entered upon its world's conquest, 
must needs abolish this system of adumbrations. 

After a fierce contest, in the short space of sev- 
enty years, Judaism was conquered, nevermore to 
be a national religion. From that day this scrip- 
ture has been fulfilled: "The children of Israel 
shall abide many days without a king, and without 
a prince, and without a sacrifice, and without an 
image, and without an ephod, and without tera- 
phim." 

(2) The next great external foe was paganism. 
Look at this corporal's guard of simple men and 
women confronting the Roman Empire with a hun- 
dred millions of subjects ingulfed in heathen idol- 
atry. So insignificant was the number of Chris- 
tians that their distinctive mission was overlooked 
by the heathen as they heaped their vituperations 
upon the opprobrious Jews. But soon they learned 
to discriminate and to hate, to persecute and to 
kill the Christians. 



Inception, Progress, and Perfection, 95 

But steadily this inward force worked outward. 
Before it idols fell; oracles were struck dumb; 
heathen temples were demolished; the prejudices 
of education were overcome; heathen manners 
and customs were reformed, and society was lifted 
to a higher plane. 

Without presuming to enter the political arena, 
yet it laid its hands upon the Roman Senate, and 
dominated thought and legislation. Gradually Ro- 
man laws were amended, until in the latter part of 
the sixth century, under. the reign of Justinian, 
their laws were collected and digested, and have 
come down to modern times. " With most of the 
European nations, Spanish America, in the prov- 
ince of Lower Canada, and in Louisiana of the 
United States, the Roman law r constitutes the prin- 
cipal basis of their common iaw r ." 

After this "life force," in its corporate body of 
true Christians, had fought many hard battles, aft- 
er the suffering of ten bloody persecutions, and 
the land had been drenched with the blood of the 
saints, on the 27th day of October, A.D. 312, at 
Milvian Bridge, Maxentius, the representative of 
heathenism, yielded the palm to Constantine, who 
had espoused the Christian cause. 

It is said of Constantine when he enlisted in this 
war, as the sun was declining in the west, he saw 
a bright cross upon the sun, and over it the in- 
scription in letters of light, "toutone nika" (in 
this sign conquer). Be this as it may, we find 
from -this date on the Roman helmets, on the 



96 The Sabbath: Religious and Civil Liberty. 

shields, and on the very coin, in hundreds of ex- 
amples, the cross and monograph of Christ in the 
sacred Greek letters, X. R. It must be remem- 
bered that Julian the Apostate set himself against 
the Christians and thought to overthrow their lib- 
erty and faith. But his plans were thwarted, and 
he died feeling conquered by the "life force." 
Some say his last words were: " Nazarene, thou 
hast conquered." 

We have only time to state that Constantine 
made a great mistake in coalescing Church and 
state. This is demonstrated by the history of 
the facts. In the fifth century Christianity had 
conquered paganism, and paganism had infect- 
ed Christianity. The Church was now victo- 
rious and corrupt. The rites of the Pantheon had 
passed into her worship ; the subtleties of the acad- 
emy, into her creed. " In an evil day," says Ba- 
con, " though with great pomp and solemnity, was 
the ill-starred alliance stricken between the old 
philosophy and the new faith." The persecutions 
of the first three centuries were the safeguard of 
the Church. These kept the unworthy from the 
ranks of the faithful. ' These served as purifying 
fires to retain intact the sanctity of the Church. 
But, says Mr. Wesley, " Constantine heaped riches 
upon the Church, and she grew corrupt." This 
gave rise to Roman Catholicism. 

(3) From this date an insidious enemy, an in- 
ternal foe, stealthily stole into the corporate body, 
and so perverted the souls of men that the "life 



Inception, Progress, and Perfection. 97 

force " withdrew. Then followed centuries of 
darkness; throughout these, innovation after inno- 
vation was introduced, until Roman Catholicism 
was fully developed and set herself up in opposi- 
tion to liberty in all its phases, personal, civil, and 
religious. The minions of hell held high carnival 
while Catholicism, the Antichrist, the enemy of 
all good, swayed the unhallowed scepter, reeking 
with the blood of the innocent. 

This moral monstrosity, the archenemy of lib- 
erty, presented a solid front to the intrepid and ag- 
gressive Luther. After ages of darkness, reach' 
ing through a period of more than a thousand 
years, you may score another grand epoch in the 
conquest of the world's freedom, effected by min- 
isters of the gospel. Wyclif, Huss, and Ridley 
caught glimpses of the light of day, and dared op- 
pose the vicegerent of hell and speak for liberty, 
but soon fell victims to the malicious hate of this 
inveterate foe. 

As Ben Franklin caught the lightning, and 
brought it from the clouds to the earth, so Luther 
caught the electric spark of liberty from God, 
which so surcharged his sc^ul that with invincibk 
courage he thundered his philippics against the 
canons of the Romish Church and the abuses of 
the age, till all Europe was aroused and the Romish 
Church was made to tremble to her utmost limit. 

This is another striking instance of the power 
of this " life force ," finding expression in the per- 
son of one man. Others were impelled by the 
7 



98 The Sabbath: Religious and Civil Liberty. 

same force, and came boldly to the front in vindi- 
cation of freedom. 

But these men had not in thought and theory 
arrived at the ultimatum^ perfection's point. Some 
of these reformers became persecutors. Philipp 
Melanchthon, Zwingli, Calvin, and Knox were 
noted for their intrepidity and uncompromising 
devotion to the cause they espoused. Their his- 
tory and the part they took in the great reforma- 
tion are too well known to require a detailed state- 
ment. Through them wrongs were rectified, evils 
abolished, the people were aroused against priest- 
craft and pontifical ignominy. They were much 
persecuted. But they pushed the battle against 
the odds; and despite the menaces, insults, and 
most determined resistance of Catholicism, these 
reformers under God overcame their assailants. 

But even the reformers did not attain to the cor- 
rect idea of liberty. 

II. Progress. 

Development marks the work of nature. There 
are not two Gods. The God of nature is the God 
of the remedial plan. Then it follows that He pro- 
ceeds in grace as in gature. So the plan of re- 
demption, with its concomitants, religious and civil 
liberty, is not the result of a single action or the 
outgrowth of one revolution, but the accretion of 
ages. The bias of education, the power of igno- 
rance, the prejudices of men, the contradiction of 
philosophers, attachments to ancient cults and in- 
fidelity, must need be subdued. 



Inception, Progress, and Perfection. 99 

Calvin's code was stern. Trivial offenses re- 
ceived the infliction of the severest penalties. 
Dancing, the manufacture and use of cards, and 
playing ninepins brought down upon the delin- 
quents the vengeance of the law. This grew out 
of the limited idea of the proper functions of the 
state. The ancient religions were all State reli- 
gions. It was the universal conception that a na- 
tion must all practice the same religion. 

The toleration of the ancients, which has been 
lauded by modern skeptical writers, was only such 
as polytheism required. To introduce foreign 
rights, or make proselytes of Roman citizens was 
contrary to Roman law, and was severely punished. 
It was no easy matter to get rid of the idea of re- 
ligious propagandism by the prowess of physical 
force. 

Erasmus stood in the front rank among the re- 
formers of the sixteenth century in advocacy of 
religious liberty. " He thought many things 
should be referred, not according to the popular 
cry, to the next general council," but to the time 
when we see God " face to face." After the 
overthrow of heathenism, conformity to the reli- 
gion of the empire was enforced by the successors 
of Constantme. The feeling of the necessity of 
uniformity in religious belief and worship, and of 
the obligation of rules to punish and to exterminate 
infidelity and heresy within their dominions, was 
universal in the Middle Ages. To this end the in- 
quisition was established by Pope Innocent III. in 



ioo The Sabbath: Religious and Civil Libei'ty. 

1208. All this came of a misapprehension of the 
scope and intent of ecclesiastical authority, and an 
erroneous conception of the relation of Church 
and state. Even the reformers held it to be the 
duty of the magistrates to protect and foster pure 
religion, and. to put down false religion. To this 
he was most solemnly bound. The toleration .of 
Zwingli and Erasmus was strongly supported by 
Luther, who disapproved punishing the Anabap- 
tists, saying: " With the Scripture they would check 
and withstand them; with fire they will accom- 
plish little." Again Luther says: "Over the 
souls of men God can and will have no one rule 
save himself alone/' Thus we see the progress 
of liberty. In the light of the gospel men grew 
more and more tolerant. 

Time would fail us to tell of William of Orange, 
the inimitable Knox, the dauntless Cromwell, and 
the chivalrous Hampden; brave spirits and noble 
men who fought the battle of liberty for earth's 
coming generations. Milton was no obscure 
factor in solving the problematic question of liber- 
ty. Impelled by the holy fire of freedom, this 
bard gave vent to his soul in the beautiful lines 
from Euripides : 

" This is true liberty, when freeborn men, 
Having to advise the public, may speak free, 
Which he who can and will deserves high praise." 

And more than this, he boldly resisted the 
tyranny of Charles I. He braved the dangers of 
the hour and brooked the tide of oppression. 



Inception > Progress, and Perfection. 101 

How different from Hume, who hated religion 
so much, says Macaulay, "that he hated liberty 
for having been allied with religion, and has 
pleaded the cause of tyranny with the dexterity of 
an advocate, while affecting the impartiality of a 
judge." 

Let us repeat, freedom is embodied in the 
" life force" of the gospel. Ministers were, and 
are, charged with the promulgation of the gospel. 
Hence it follows as a logical sequence that for the 
freedom of the age we are indebted to the ministry. 
Listen to the testimony of McCrie: " In effecting 
that memorable revolution, which terminated in 
favor of religious and political liberty in so many 
nations of Europe, the public teachers of the 
Protestant doctrine had a principal influence/' By 
their instructions and exhortations, they roused 
the people to consider their rights and exert their 
power. 

That stormy day, the 21st of December, 1620, 
marks an ever memorable period in the world's 
history. The Pilgrim Fathers had sought the 
wilds of America, that they might give expression 
to advanced thoughts of religious liberty. And now 
amid New England's stormy wilds, they joined 
in paeons till the deep jungles reverberated the 
praise of the God of liberty. John Robinson was 
their leader. His philosophic mind had attained 
to principles which approached, though they did 
not reach to, the modern doctrine of toleration, of 
the limited sphere of the state. It remained for 



102 The Sabbath : Religious and Civil Liberty. 

one man — and who but a minister? — to bring for- 
ward the new doctrine as to the state, which limits 
the functions of the magistrate to the cognizance of 
offenses against the second table of the law. This 
doctrine involves the toleration of all forms of re- 
ligious belief and worship, as far as they do not 
directly disturb the peace of society, or infringe 
upon the authority of the magistrate in his own 
proper sphere. This principle of religious liberty 
which Roger Williams adopted in Massachusetts, 
was incorporated in the government of the colony 
which he founded in Rhode Island, and is the 
principle to which the American system of gov- 
ernment have gradually conformed. 

To-day we boast of the best government that 
ever graced the earth. Beyond contradiction it is 
the product of the kingdom of God among men, 
the result of the work of God's messengers, the 
reflection of God's perfect law of liberty photo- 
graphed on the hearts of men — the crystallization 
of Christian sentiment,, the correlation of the 
earthly and the divine. 

We cannot refrain at this juncture °of our trea- 
tise from paying a just tribute of respect to the 
memory of the Wesleys. We come not to pro- 
nounce an empty panegyric upon buried virtues, 
but we come to speak of living facts and to tes- 
tify to a conscious experience. We would not 
abate one jot or tittle from the names of the illus- 
trious dead (Luther, Calvin, and others); but we 
must say that no two men have done more in 



Inception, Progress, and Perfection. 103 

advancing freedom's cause than John and Charles 
Wesley. They too were reformers, both of the- 
ory and of practice. They took up the work of 
reformation where Luther left off. 

It could not have been expected of Luther to 
break away from the darkness of Catholicism into 
the full light of liberty at a single leap, but he 
boldly and earnestly emphasized the great doc- 
trine of justification by faith and its concomitants. 
This produced its fruits: a great reformation in 
thought and practice. 

The Wesleys made their great fight for "Armin- 
ianism " and " Christian perfection.'' The stress 
laid upon the doctrine of salvation for all, condi- 
tioned upon faith in Jesus Christ, found a hearty 
response in the generous and natural impulse of the 
human heart. So this doctrine spread like fire in 
dry stubble. So rapid has been its progress that 
to-day it begirds the world. The Wesleys empha- 
sized the highest type of liberty: salvation from 
all sin. We are taught from experience, as well as 
from God's word, that to be under the dominion 
of sin is to be a slave. No slavery is so abject as 
the slavery of sin. No man is a free man until he 
has the mastery over all outward sin, until out- 
ward foes are conquered. Aye, no man is per- 
fectly free until all inward as well as outward sin is 
conquered — yea, more, is extirpated. Then he is a 
free man, and not until then. The Wesleys urged 
their followers on to this state. This is perfection 
in Christian experience — the freedom of the per- 



104 The Sabbath: Religions and Civil Liberty. 

feet law of liberty. This state has its counterpart 
in civil liberty; to this we are hastening and must 
come before the final end. 

The bursting in of resplendent liberty upon the 
American colonies was hailed with rapt delight. 
Some were speechless with ecstacy, many wept, 
and the old doorkeeper of Congress died of joy. 
Congress did a befitting thing, by meeting at an early 
hour on the 20th of October, 1781. That afternoon 
they marched in solemn procession to the Luther- 
an Church to return thanks to Almighty God for 
giving them liberty. While the war that gave this 
liberty was pending, Patrick Henry said, " Three 
millions of people armed in the holy cause of lib- 
erty are invincible by any force that our enemies 
can send against us. Besides this, there is a just 
God that presides over the destiny of armies and 
nations, and he will raise up friends to fight our 
battles for us. ' ' So our forefathers were witnesses 
to the truth of my theory. 

But despite the history of the past, which records 
the faithfulness and efficiency of God's ministers, 
and despite their fidelity in this age to the best in- 
terests of society, because, forsooth, they would 
exterminate the whisky demon, ex-Governor, now 
Senator Coke, of Texas, would scourge them 
back and cut off their rations. Why thus treat 
them ? What evil have they done? Why, some of 
them have the courage of 1heir convictions, and 
seek upon the hustings, and through the press, as 
well as in the pulpit, to expurgate this land from 



Inception, Progress, and Perfection. 105 

this dread foe, this enemy of all good. Because 
they appear as the advocates of sobriety and of 
virtue, to vindicate the innocent and to fortify the 
defenseless against the oppression of the sensual 
and devilish. For this cause, and this only, would 
this learned Democratic leader relegate them 
to the poorhouse. Hon. R. Q. Mills, now Sena- 
tor, of Texas, in his Dallas speech against the 
amendment providing for State constitutional pro- 
hibition, delivered in May, 1887, propounds this 
question: " Who brought this new idea [meaning 
prohibition] into Texas anyhow? ' : To this he 
gives the following answer: "It was brought in 
the bosoms of Protestant political priesthood." 
Then after reviewing the history of the golden 
calf, made at the instance of Aaron, he said: 
" Would you have thought that that idolatry and 
that great sin could have come from a preacher ? 
And yet it did, and yet the whole history of the 
human family will show you that there has been 
more cruel and remorseless suffering caused by 
the preachers and priests than ALL THE BAL- 
ANCE OF THE WORLD." Before such in- 
gratitude let us hide our face in contempt. Before 
such ignorance, or malicious perversion of history, 
silence would be inexcusable. 

We are not called upon to speak in vindication 
of Catholic priests, and pontifical bravadoes who in 
the ages agone, consorted with the evil. But 
we shall vindicate the true successors of the 
apostles, the apostles themselves, and faithful and 



io6 The Sabbath: Religious and Civil Liberty. 

true ministers of all ages, and especially of this 
age,, against such aspersion. We dare say that 
God's accredited ministers have always conserved 
the best interests of the people; they have advo- 
cated the highest type of liberty in their respec- 
tive periods of the ages, and have worked out this 
problem of freedom. We challenge the world to 
contradict successfully our conclusion — to wit: 
Civilization is evolved from the life force of the 
gospel; civil liberty is inseparably connected with 
religious liberty, and follows it as cause and effect. 
But the end is not yet. Perfection is God's order 
in nature, in Christian experience, in the govern- 
ment of men, in individual freedom, in every rela- 
tion of life — in all things. We have not yet at- 
tained to, but are pressing on to the final goal. 

III. Impediments to Further Progress. 

1. First, we shall mention Roman Catholicism. 

This is no ordinary foe. The adroitness, the 
chicanery — yea, the simony — of this compact have 
been manifest throughout the ages. Their wisdom 
in planning, their skill in building, their outward 
show of charity, their imposing ceremonies, their 
educational scheming and their unfaltering energy 
indicate to us a compact of strength hoary with the 
frost of ages. Can you read the signs of the times ? 
Then call me not a pessimist. On every hand may 
be heard the click of the craftsman's chisel, or the 
thud of the mechanic's hammer, polishing and fit- 
ting the stones, and tiling roofs where principles 



Inception, Progress, and Perfection. 107 

adverse to our liberties are inculcated. Teeming 
hundreds of Roman Catholic immigrants are annu- 
ally pouring into these United States. Already 
they are interfering with our educational system. 
Their aim is to control the public school fund, so 
as to foster their own institutions. Senator Blair 
said in a speech before the Senate that the Jesuits 
were there "to defeat legislation that might not 
suit their ideas, and to control it to their interest; 
that they had a representative upon the editorial 
staff of every leading secular journal throughout 
the United States." They are pushing their work 
on every hand, and yet men tell us that there is 
no danger to our government from this source. Let 
it be remembered that eternal vigilance is the price 
of liberty. Let the unsuspecting tell us what this 
means. On May 28, 1890, a Catholic mass meeting 
was held in Milwaukee, Wis. After affirming the 
infallibility of the pope and acknowledging the dual 
duty of Catholics as members of the Church and as 
citizens, they proceeded to talk of personal and he- 
reditary rights. They wound up by saying: " The 
chief object of this organization will be to see that 
no friend of the paternal measure is elected to ei- 
ther branch of the Legislature, and to watch and 
oppose all bills presented in the Legislature antag- 
onistic to Catholics." But what if these Catholics 
should get control of the ballot box? Much every 
way. They have never renounced the old doc- 
trine of the subordination ,of the state to the 
Church, and the authority of the latter in matters 



108 The Sabbath: Religious and Civil Liberty. 

of civil government and legislation, as well as in 
religious matters. On the contrary they boldly 
assert these principles. Hear this from the Cath- 
olic World for July, 1872: " With the means of 
intelligent communication and rapid transportation, 
it is not an improbability to hope that the Head of 
the Church may again become the acknowledged 
head of the united family of Christian nations ; the 
arbiter and judge between princes and people, be- 
tween governments and governments, the expo- 
nent of the supreme justice and the highest law. 
While the state has rights, she has them only in 
virtue and by permission of the superior authority, 
and that authority can only be expressed through 
the Church — that is, through the organic law, in- 
fallibly announced and unchangeably asserted re- 
gardless of temporal consequences. It is within 
the power of the ballot, wielded by Catholic hands, 
to establish." 

This betrays their policy. They are grabbing 
after the reins of this government. They are con- 
centrating their strength in the United States. 

Again it may be asked: " But what if the Cath- 
olics should get the balance of power? 5: Let facts 
answer this question. 

At the general assembly of missionaries of all 
denominations in Mexico in 1888, it was ascer- 
tained that over sixty persons had suffered mar- 
tyrdom at the instance of Roman Catholic priests 
during the past twenty-five years ; and the end is 
not yet. This bloody work is still going on. True 



Inception, Progress, and Perfection. 109 

to the instincts of their depraved hearts, they 
breathe out bitterness, and manifest their hate and 
murderous spirit in the United States as well as 
Mexico. 

The New York Freeman, the leading Roman 
Catholic organ of this country, in its issue of 
March 29, 1890, advocates the extermination of 
Protestantism as soon as Rome has the power in 
America. The occasion of this furor was the ap- 
pointment of Dr. Dorchester and Gen. Morgan as 
Indian Commissioners. The Catholic News, of 
New York, March 5, says: " Every Senator who 
voted for this confirmation must be carefully 
watched. His future political career in his State 
must not be advanced by the Catholic votes which 
helped him to reach the position he so shamefully 
abused. Every one is now a marked man." Our 
countrymen, we appeal to your patriotism, to your 
judgment, to your conscience. Be not deceived; 
here is an insiduous foe undermining the founda- 
tion of our freedom. Shall we look idly on and 
let this rising tide sweep away our chartered rights ? 
Heaven forbid ! No tongue could tell the human 
sorrow, or pen portray the scenes of carnage and 
death consequent upon Roman Catholic rule. 

2. The next obstacle to our development is ava- 
rice and appetite. 

We stand to-day face to face with a gigantic 
evil: we refer to the whisky traffic. It is a dread- 
ful incubus upon society, a blotch upon our fair 
escutcheon, the disgrace of the nineteenth century. 



no The Sabbath: Religious and Civil Liberty. 

It is folly to undertake to describe this evil. Its 
proportions are wonderful, its effects baneful, and 
its results death. It is an acknowledged evil. 
There is no controversy about this. Reason de- 
mands its prohibition; an enlightened age demands 
it ; human philanthropy demands its extermination ; 
suffering widowhood and depressed orphanage de- 
mand its abolition; religion demands it; earth 
and heaven demand it. Up to this hour, avarice 
and appetite have held the balance of power. It 
is said, " Knowledge is power," and so it is; but 
" the love of money is the root of all evil." In 
this fight money is the balance of power, for it 
prostitutes knowledge to its selfish ends. Money 
controls politics and legislation. The whisky traf- 
fic is to-day one of the greatest menaces to the lib- 
erty of this commonwealth. It lays its hand either 
directly or indirectly upon statesmen, who run 
" greedily after the error of Balaam for reward," 
or else, for fear they will lose political prestige, 
come boldly forward as the champions of this ne- 
farious business. Strip this question of its stolen 
livery, separate it from its borrowed appendages, 
let it stand in its true, light, put it on its own merit, 
and no man with a scintilla of self-respect and a 
single impulse of true humanity would have the ef- 
frontery to advocate this traffic for one day. 

But these politicians come to us with a ruse. 
They talk to us about sumptuary laws and a -pa- 
ternal government. They ring the changes on 
personal liberty until they dupe with their sophis- 



Inception, Progress, and Perfection. in 

try the illiterate and almost deceive the very elect. 
A review of this whole question, the evils of in- 
temperance, the baneful effects of saloons on so- 
ciety , the corruption, subjective and objective, of 
this whisky traffic; the support given to this the 
greatest of all curses by men in high position — men 
to whom we have committed the keys of govern- 
ment, the custodians of society — horrifies us in the 
extreme. Here are men of the first order of tal- 
ent; men of wealth, men of influence; senators, 
Governors, Congressmen, and State representa- 
tives, joined together and in league with the worst 
elements of society — the saloon elements, the rab- 
ble, and the prostitutes — to foster this Moloch and 
to rivet upon society the chains of the most galling 
tyranny ever known to man. To hide their crime 
they have arraigned the ministry and innocent 
w r omanhood, and held them before society as ob- 
jects of contempt. Over the weaknesses of men, 
and inadvertent mistakes, we throw the veil of char- 
ity; but over their audacity, their effrontery we 
would hang the light of the ages, and print their 
deeds indelibly upon memory's pages. 

Lord Francis Bacon beclouded a brilliant life 
by acts of perfidy. His ingratitude and infidelity 
toward Lord Essex was truly reprehensible, and 
deserved the condemnation that was visited upon 
him. His conduct in the case of Peacham, an 
aged clergyman, outrages humanity, and challenges 
comparison with the most brutal acts of paganism. 
Peacham was accused of having written a sermon 



[12 The Sabbath: ReHgiotis and Civil Liberty. 



that contained some passages of a treasonable na- 
ture. This sermon was never preached; was 
found in the old man's study. The most servile 
lawyers said there were grave difficulties both as 
to the facts and as to the law involved in this case. 
Bacon was attorney-general, and was employed to 
settle the question of law by tampering with the 
judges; and the question of facts by torturing the 
prisoner. Bacon succeeded with the judges, hav- 
ing met and overcome strong resistance in Lord 
Coke. But in order to convict Peacham it was 
necessary to find facts as well as law. So this 
wretched old man was put to the rack, and while 
undergoing the horrible infliction was examined 
by Bacon in vain. No confession could be wrung 
out of him. The charge was obviously futile, yet 
Peacham was left to drag out the rest of his days 
in prison. 

Sad as this story is, it is not as dark as the his- 
tory before us. We dare assert, if the statesmen 
of this grand state of ours had stood by the min- 
istry and the women, who were for home, God, 
and country, Texas to-day would have been free 
from the whisky curse. Call us fanatics if you 
will; one thing is fixed: We are now and forever 
the enemy of the whisky traffic. We admire the 
patriotism of Hamilcar, who swore his son Han- 
nibal upon the altar of his country never to be 
the friend of the Romans. We admire as much 
the devotion of Hannibal, who cherished the reso- 
lution to avenge some day upon Rome the shame 



Inception, Progress, and Perfection. 113 

and injuries of Carthage* So we would visit to- 
day the sins of these leaders upon them, that they 
may learn to sin no more. To-day we charge 
them with sacrificing the best interests of this com- 
monwealth; we charge such of them as were mem- 
bers of the Church with perfidy to the Church; 
we charge them to-day as the enemies of true free- 
dom. 

Personal liberty! What is liberty? We aver: 
Liberty is freedom of action within prescribed lim- 
its. We speak reverently when we say, God him- 
self is restricted. The periphery that restricts 
Deity is greater than that which restricts man. 
But He cannot do wrong; He must do right. The 
attributes of justice, righteousness, and love hold 
Him to the right. The law of right doing that re- 
stricts God restricts men, individually and collect- 
ively. 

If we aid or abet an evil, then we are -pa?'ticefs 
criminis. The same is true of a government. 
This whislcy traffic is a great evil ; for the govern- 
ment to license it is to pervert the end of govern- 
ment, which end is to subserve the best interests 
of the commonwealth. 

God has given to us a natural law and a divine 
code. Mr. Blackstone says: "Upon these two 
foundations — the law of nature and the law of Rev- 
elation — depend all human laws; that is to say, no 
human laws should be suffered to contradict these." 
As an illustration, he cites: *! Murder, which is ex- 
pressly forbidden by the law of revelation, and 



114 The Sabbath: Religious and Civil Libei'ty. 

demonstrably by the natural law; and from these 
prohibits arise the unlawfulness of this crime." 
Apply this principle to the question under consid- 
eration. God, in Revelation, says: " Woe to him 
that putteth his bottle to his neighbor's lips." He 
prohibits drunkenness and revelry. 

Nature's law teaches us that drunkenness is a 
crime; the two, the natural and the divine law, 
agree as touching this question. Then it follows, 
expressly from the divine law, and by necessary 
implication from natural law, to foster this evil is 
wrong. They tell us to prohibit the whisky traf- 
fic is an infringement of personal rights. They 
tell us that man's highest liberty is found in unre- 
stricted freedom. Philip Philips, in his " Social 
Strictures," says: "Carried to its logical conclu- 
sion, the doctrine of unrestricted freedom is the 
gospelof anarchy. Its advocates stop at what they 
call the police line. But if such ideas be true, 
why should we have police? Why not let every 
one take care of himself and enforce his own 
rights without calling on others for help." This 
idea of unrestricted liberty is founded on the 
basest selfishness. It is in manifest antagonism to 
the Divine law, which teaches us that we are re- 
sponsible for our brother to the extent of our in- 
fluence and the effect of our actions upon him. 
That law teaches us that " if meat make my broth- 
er to offend, I will eat no flesh while the world 
standeth, lest I make my brother to offend." That 
law teaches us that our greatest freedom is found 



Inception , Progress, and Perfection. 115 

in the most perfect self-renunciation and sacrifice. 
The law requiring this sacrifice for others is termed 
a perfect law, and the freedom it brings of the high- 
est type. This principle of sacrifice is interwoven in 
nature's laws: the sun shines for the earth, vege- 
tation grows for animals, lower animals live for 
the higher. "No man liveth to himself." Man 
must live for man. If our appetites control us in 
hurtful indulgences, then we are not free, but 
slaves — slaves to tobacco, or whisky, or some- 
thing else. If avarice controls our actions in a 
hurtful matter, as dishonesty, the oppression of 
the poor, or the robbing others of happiness, we 
are not only slaves, but we are great sinners. 
Personal liberty, they say! Aye, do they not 
mean the right to rob homes of happiness, the 
right to trample on affections and crush hearts, the 
right to wave the bloody hand of death over the 
home of despair; the right to make money at the 
price of blood and virtue? The picture of this 
kind of liberty w r as graphically drawn by the 
apostle Peter in his Second Epistle ii. 18, 19: 
" For when they speak great swelling w r ords of van- 
ity, they allure through the lusts of the flesh, through 
much wantonness, those that were clean escaped 
from them who live in error. While they prom- 
ise them liberty, they themselves are the servants 
of corruption: for of whom a man is overcome, 
of the same is he brought in bondage." Person- 
al liberty? Yea, the liberty of corruption, the lib- 
erty of bondage, says Peter ; derogating manhood, 



n6 The Sabbath: Religious and Civil Liberty. 

depleting society, quenching devotion, and blast- 
ing virtue. The whisky traffic is based upon the 
law of self-indulgence, of self -liberty. This is the 
law that obtains among the brutes ; it is not the 
liberty of freemen, it is beneath the dignity of 
men, it is antithetical to philosophy and plainly re- 
pugnant to the ethics of Deity. All law, human 
and divine, requires us to seek not our own indul- 
gence, but the good of others. This, and this 
only, gives us happiness and contentment. True 
freedom is found is self-denial. This requires us 
to surrender certain personal rights for the good 
of others. 

3. We have space to notice but briefly the third 
obstruction to the -perfection of liberty, which is 
avarice. 

It rises up in its might and urges on the battle 
between labor and capital. There are slumbering 
fires of discontent ready to burst out and leap forth 
into the most terrific political conflagration at the 
slightest touch of some miscreant. The political 
pot is briskly boiling. Political parties are multi- 
plying, factional organizations and political fili- 
bustering predominate. Discontent, strifes, and 
strikes are rife. These are the indications of the 
unrest of mind and perturbation of spirits that ac- 
tuate the masses of this republic. This indicates 
to us potential elements, as the pent up fires in 
the bosom of a vast mountain, just ready to find 
outlet in dread eruption, which may baptize this 
fair land in blood. 



Inception, Progress, and Perfection, 117 



This avarice, in its greed of gain, overleaps all 
restraints, and not only oppresses the poor by pool- 
ing and forming trusts, but in open defiance of all 
law, desecrates God's holy Sabbath to an alarming 
extent. Freedom's great battle must be fought in 
the West and in the Southwest. The great cen- 
ters of population and marts are shifting ; they are 
coming to us. This fertile soil, these verdant 
plains, this salubrious air, the delectable hills and 
valleys are attracting myriads of immigrants. A 
heterogeneous mass of humanity, representing all 
nationalities and all religions, are here, and con- 
tinue to come. There is a want of affinity among 
them. They are incongruous elements, at war 
with each other. 

But what have we to oppose to all of this? 
Looking from the standpoint of a pessimist, the 
heart beats slowly and the blood congeals. But 
when we step upon the mount of God, with the tele- 
scope of faith, and sweep through the future, we 
see the Captain of our salvation marshaling the 
sacramental army for impending conflicts; not to 
act on the defense, but to wage an aggressive w r ar, 
a war of extermination against the allied forces of 
hell; to drive back Apollyon and his minions of 
darkness, to bind him and cast him out, to send 
him down to the bottomless pit in chains ; to abol- 
ish saloons, counteract avarice, and subdue the 
the spirit of Antichrist ; to overthrow the dynasty 
of anarchy and establish the kingdom of freedom. 
" For he must reign till he hath put all enemies 
under his feet." 



n8 The Sabbath: Religious and Civil Liberty. 

4. Conclusion. 

We now occupy the standpoint of an optimist. 
We look back over the battlefields of the past. 
We see the enemies of freedom fleeing from every 
battlefield— now conquered. We behold over a 
defunct Judaism, over an abolished Roman hea- 
thenism, over a subdued Roman Catholicism of the 
sixteenth century, and over hundreds and thou- 
sands of battle grounds of less moment, the ban- 
ner of Jesus Christ, stained with his own hallowed 
blood, and with this inscription upon it: "If the 
Son shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed." 
Hallalujah, "unto the King eternal, immortal, in- 
visible, the only wise God, be honor and glory for- 
ever and ever. Amen ! " He has never lost a sin- 
gle battle. 

The great " life force" is unifying God's peo- 
ple, and is crystallizing public thought and senti- 
ment. It is bringing the nations of earth together 
with hearts of sympathy and words of mutual 
friendship. Good men are praying and looking 
when the prayer of our Lord shall be answered, 
when we shall all be one. 

What means pan-national councils, Ecumenical 
Conferences, and international assemblies ? These 
are the scintillations of the star of hope, the har- 
binger of the coming day. 

Electricity and steam are bringing the ends of 
the earth together. So is the electric force of the 
perfect law of liberty bringing God's people to- 
gether for the finale^ the perfection of freedom. 



Inception, Prog?' ess, and Perfection. 119 

This is to be the end, and we are gradually ap- 
proaching it. We hail with rapt delight every ad- 
vance along these lines. We advocate and pray 
for the day when all barriers shall be removed 
from between God's people, and they shall be one 
and inseparable. "United we stand, divided we 
fall." To hasten this day, the day when freedom, 
civil and religious, shall find its counterpart in 
God's perfect law of liberty, we must be true to 
each other, true to our country, and true to God. 

The Lord Jesus is getting ready to take this 
world. From center to circumference the camp 
fires are burning, and the shout of triumph from 
the home land is answered from the far-off re- 
gions. 



APPENDIX, 

A. 

At the last session of the Northwest Texas 
Conference, held in Corsicana from November 
25 to December x, 1891, while the report on the 
Sabbath question was up for discussion, Bishop 
Fitzgerald, who was presiding over the Confer- 
ence, having been called upon to decide a question 
of law, growing out of the question of the pending 
report, took occasion to criticise the word "for- 
eigner" which occurred in the report, The word 
was used in the report in the same connection as 
it appears in this treatise. The good bishop ob- 
jected to the word, because he said that " it was 
in bad taste, a reflection, and an insult to many- 
good people, and that in a sense we were all for- 
eigners." These remarks were astounding to the 
writer,who was Chairman of the committee which 
brought in that report. At that time, however, 
we deemed it best to set up no defense of a par- 
ticular word, since the word in question was not 
essential to the validity of the facts contained in 
the report, the object being to get the report 
adopted by the Conference. But now we will 
make a careful survey of this criticism. Webster 
defines the word as follows: "Foreigner: A per- 
son belonging to or owning allegiance to a foreign 
(120) 



The Sabbath: Religious and Civil Liberty. 121 

country; one not native in the country or jurisdic- 
tion under consideration or not naturalized there; 
an alien; a stranger." In brief, the word means 
one born in another country from the one spoken 
of, although he may be a naturalized citizen. 
And this has been the meaning of the word from 
time immemorial. The word was in use among 
the Hebrews, and occurs in Deuteronomy xv. 3 and 
elsewhere, and was used in the sense in which we 
have used it. It is from the Hebrew word noki'ij 
a derivation from the root nakar, to know, but con- 
tra not to know, etc. This word Gesenius the 
lexicographer defines as follows: " Unknown, 
strange, foreign. Spoken of as one from another 
land and people." (Deut. xiv. 21; Ezra x. 2; and 
Ex. xxi. 8.) This agrees exactly with Web- 
ster and definitely fixes the primary meaning of 
the word to be of foreign birth. There is another 
word, however, toshabh, which was in use among 
the Hebrews, w r hich means a sojourner, stranger, 
without the right of a citizen. Leviticus xxii. 10, 
xxv. 47.) The Greek word -paroikos, which oc- 
curs in Ephesians ii. 19, is the counterpart of this 
w r ord. Thayer, the Greek lexicographer, says of 
-paroikos: " In the Scriptures a stranger, foreigner, 
one who lives in a place without the right of 
citizenship." The latter word is specific; the 
former is generic. We used the word in the first 
sense given — to wit, not native born. As to the 
criticism that " the word is in bad taste," we 
would say that we have the highest authority for 



122 Appendix. 



its use: Moses and Paul, who were under divine in- 
spiration, as well as the best writers of every age. 
Again the bishop claimed that it was " an insult to 
every foreign-born citizen/' What is it that is an 
insult, and in what way an insult? Is it " an insult 
to tell a man that he was born in England, Scot- 
land, Ireland, France, or Prussia? If born in any 
of these lands, then he is not a native, but a for- 
eigner; not indigenous, but exotic. But w r hat is 
there in this to insult him? If anything, we con- 
fess that we are too stupid to see it. The bishop 
told us that "in a sense we are all foreigners." 
Admitted, but not in any sense that the word was 
used in that report or in this book; for the word 
used refers to a naturalized citizen, so it has purely 
a political application. It is used, in "an accom- 
modated sense and has a spiritual application in 
the English version, and means " one who lives on 
earth as a stranger, a sojourner on the earth." 
In this sense we are all foreigners, but no other. 



B. 

The importance of this question entitles it to a 
careful review. We believe that those to whom 
we commit the destiny of our country should be 
held to a strict account for all their political acts. 
Adequate censure should be duly administered for 
every innovation upon our sacred institutions. 
The moral sentiment of this country should not be 
dormant; it should be both defensive and aggres- 



The Sabbath: Religions and Civil Liberty, 123 

sive. Silence and inactivity may be construed to 
imply concurrence or connivance. The majority 
of the committee to whom was referred the Maetze 
" Sunday "bill," brought in a favorable report. 
But there was a minority report which reads as 
follows : 

The undersigned beg leave to dissent from the majority re- 
port of said committee recommending that Senate Bill No. 185 
do pass. We believe that the passage of this law will greatly 
increase crime, discourage moral sentiment, and be injurious to 
the general healthfulness of our common country; that it will 
establish nuisances in our large cities, and we enter our solemn 
protest against its passage and recommend that it do not 
pass. 

Respectfully submitted. Kearby, 

Craxforb. 

Senator Kearby moved to adopt the minority re- 
port. Maetze, Garwood, and Townsend spoke 
against the adoption of the minority report, and 
Kearby, Simkins, and Cranford in favor of it. 
The vote was taken upon engrossment of the bill, 
with the following result: In favor of engrossment: 
Atlee, Burney, Clark, Glasscock, Johnson, Lub- 
bock, Mott, Pope, Townsend, Garwood, Maetze, 
and Tyler. Against engrossment: Carter, Crane, 
Finch, Frank, Kearby, Kimbrough, McKenney, 
Potter, Seale, Simkins, Stephens, and Whatley. 
It will be seen that there was a tie vote, there 
being twelve on each side. Lieut. Gov. Pen- 
dleton voted in favor of the bill. Senator Cran- 
ford announced that he was paired with Senator 
Clements; that he (Cranford) was opposed to 
the bill and that Clements would vote for it if he 



124 Appendix. 



were present. The bill coming up for final action, 
the vote was taken, which resulted as follows: In 
favor of the bill, E. A. Atlee, Burney, James Clark, 
Clements, H. M. Garwood, G. W. Glasscock, J. 
H. Harrison, E. J. Maetze, T. U. Lubbock, M. 
Mott, W. H. Pope, G. W. Tyler, and R. N. 
Weisiger, making thirteen; against the bill, A, -M. 
Carter, M. M. Crane, J. W. Cranford, H. A. 
Finch, L. M. Frank, J. G. Kearby, J. M. Mc- 
Kinney, C. L. Potter, W. B. Page, E. J. Simkins, 
J. H. Stephens, H. T. Sims, and L. A. Whatley, 
making thirteen, which was a tie again. So 
Lieut. Gov. Pendleton gave the casting vote the 
second time against God, against Christianity, 
and against humanity. If righteousness exalteth 
a nation, and sin is a reproach to any people; and 
if our prosperity as a nation depends upon our 
fidelity to God, then how can we look for God's 
blessings to rest upon our land, when the very 
men who are the loudest in denunciation of moral 
reformation are the most easily and certainly ele- 
vated to positions of trust. Does not God say: 
" The wicked walk on every side, when the vilest 
men are exalted?'' But when is this great wrong 
to be corrected? Not until those who profess to 
be the children of God withhold all support and 
encouragement from such politicians. If we so 
readily pass over the malicious and diabolical acts, 
deliberately made to throttle Christianity, or else 
committed to curry the favor of the vicious ele- 
ment of society, we may not expect soon to recover 



The Sabbath: Religious and Civil Liberty. 125 

from our moral paralysis. Our gratitude is due 
the faithful thirteen who stood for the Sabbath, 
and to a conservative House of Representatives that 
killed the nefarious bill. We are grateful to God 
that true patriotism is still living, and we devoutly 
pray that the day may soon dawn upon us when 
we may have true men at the helm of State. 



That the reader may apprehend more fully the 
animus of the " Maetze bill," and realize how the 
legislation of Texas for the past twelve years tends to 
the destruction of our Sabbath, we will append the 
Sabbath law found in the revised Statutes of the 
State, 1879, and the subsequent legislation. 

Article 183. Any person who shall hereafter labor, or com- 
pel, force, or oblige his employees, workmen, or apprentices to 
labor on Sunday, shall be fined not less than ten nor more than 
fifty dollars. 

Article 184. The preceding article shall not apply to house- 
hold duties, work of necessity or charity ; nor necessary work 
on farms or plantations in order to prevent loss of any crop; 
nor to running of steamboats and other water crafts, rail cars, 
wagon trains, common carriers, nor to the delivering of goods by 
them or the receiving or storing of said goods by the parties, or 
their agents to whom said goods are delivered; nor to stages 
carrying the United States mail or passengers ; nor to founder- 
ies, sugar mills, or herders who have a herd of stock actually 
gathered and under herd; nor to persons traveling; nor to fer- 
rymen or keepers of toll bridges, keepers of hotels, boarding 
houses and restaurants and their servants; nor to keepers of 
liveiy stables and their servants ; nor to any person who conscien- 
tiously believes that the seventh or any other day of the week 
ought to be observed as the Sabbath, and actually refrains from 
business on that day for religious reasons. 



126 Appendix. 

Article 185. Any person who shall run or be engaged in 
running any horse race, or shall permit or allow the use of nine 
or ten pin alley, or shall engage in match shooting, or any spe- 
cies of gaming for money or other consideration, within the 
limits of any town or city on Sunday, shall be fined not less 
than twenty nor more than fifty dollars. 

Article 186. Any merchant, grocer, or dealer in wares or 
merchandise, or trader in any lawful business whatever, who 
shall barter or sell on Sunday shall be fined not less than ten 
nor more than fifty dollars; provided this article shall not apply 
to markets or dealers in provisions as to sales made by them be- 
fore 9 o'clock A.M. 

Article 187. The preceding article shall not apply to the 
sale of drugs and medicines on Sunday. 

The following amendment was adopted in 1883: 

Section i. Be it enacted by the Legislature of the State of 
Texas, That Article 186 of the Penal Code be amended so as 
hereafter to read as follows — to wit: 

Article 186. Any merchant, grocer, or dealer in wares or 
merchandise, or trader in any lawful business whatever, or 
agent or employee of any such persons, who shall sell or barter 
on Sunday shall be fined not less than twenty nor more + lian 
fifty dollars; provided that this article shall not apply to mar- 
kets or dealers in provisions as to sales of provisions made by 
them before 9 o'clock A r M., nor the sale of burial or shrouding 
material; provided that the sale of newspapers, ice, and milk 
at any hour in the day shall be permissible ; provided further, 
that nothing in this title shall be construed to prevent the send- 
ing or receiving of telegraph messages. Approved April 10, 
1883. 

In 1887 the following amendment was adopted: 

Section i. Amending the Sunday law, additional exemp- 
tions. An act to amend Article 183 of the Penal Code of the 
State of Texas, and to amend an act entitled An act to amend 
Article 186 of the Penal Code approved April 10, A.D., 1883, 
Chapter 2, and Title 7, and to amend said chapter and title by 
adding thereto Article 186 a, providing additional exemptions 
from the operation of the Sunday law. 



The Sabbath: Religions and Civil Liberty, 127 

Section i. Be it enacted by the Legislature of the State of 
Texas, that Article 183 of the Penal Code of the State of Texas, 
and that an act to amend Article 186 of the Penal Code, ap- 
proved April 10, A.D., 1883, be amended so as to hereafter to read 
as follows: 

Article 183. Any person who shall labor, or compel, force, 
or oblige his employees, workmen, or apprentices to labor, on 
Sunday, or any person who shall hereafter hunt game of any 
kind whatsoever on Sunday within one mile of any Church, 
schoolhouse, or private residence, shall be fined not less than 
ten nor more than fifty dollars. 

Article 186. Any merchant, grocer, or dealer in wares or 
merchandise, or trader in any business whatever, or the propri- 
etor of any place of public amusement, or the agent or employee 
of any such person, who shall sell or barter, or permit his place 
of business or place of public amusement to be opened for the 
purpose of traffic or public amusement, on Sunday, shall be fined 
not less than twenty nor more than fifty dollars. The term 
" place of public amusement " shall be construed to mean cir- 
cuses, theaters, variety theaters, and such other amusements as 
are exhibited and for which an admission fee is charged ; and shall 
also include dances at disorderly houses, low dives, and places 
of like character, with or without fees for admission. 

Article 186 a. The preceding article shall not apply to 
markets or dealers in provisions as to sales of provisions made 
by them before 9 o'clock a.m., nor the sale of burial or shroud- 
ing material, newspapers, ice, ice-cream, milk, nor to the send- 
ing of telegraph or telephone messages at any hour of the day, 
nor keepers of drug stores, hotels, boarding houses, restaurants, 
livery stables, barber shops, bath houses, or ice dealers, nor to 
telegraph or telephone offices. 

A careful study of these amendments will show 
the gradual encroachments upon the Sabbath by 
the Legislature of our State, which is just cause 
for much alarm and stands as a challenge to the 
greatest vigilance on the part of Christians. Mr. 
Maetze and his colleagues sought to pass the fol- 



128 Appendix. 



lowing amendment: " Senate bill No. 185, being 
an act to amend Chapter 2 of Title 7 of the Crim- 
inal Code of the State of Texas by adding thereto 
Article 187 a, limiting the operation of said Chap- 
ter 2 to the hours between the hour 9 a.m. and 
the hour of 4 p.m." It will be seen that, had this 
bill passed, Texas would have had no Sabbath ex- 
cept between the hours of 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. 



The End. 



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